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If Summers is in favor, Americans should be against. The man is an incompetent crook.
On the overhaul of the financial regulatory system, which Obama has said he wants to see passed in the Senate within two weeks, Summers said, "I expect that reform is going to pass."
He said he did not see how the measure could fail "given what we've been through" in the deepest recession in more than 50 years.
Summers predicted the economy will continue creating jobs but slowly and that the unemployment rate will decline slowly because more people will start trying to find work as the economy improves.
Summers expects financial overhaul to pass Senate
WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama's top economic adviser said Sunday he believes Congress will pass new oversight rules for the financial industry.
Lawrence Summers also said putting even more Americans back to work is a White House "preoccupation."
Saying the employment trend has turned, Summers cautioned that "to get back to the surface we've got a long way to go."
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g2iT13Zj0M1QO-W5vkWvHwHxBRDgD9ES9DUG0
Obama's Economic Brain Trust - The Guys that got it Wrong
http://www.counterpunch.com/martens04022010.html
The Guys Who Got It Wrong
Obama's Economic Brain Trust
By PAM MARTENS
America is held out to the world as a meritocracy. You work hard, you play by the rules, you make sound judgment calls, you succeed. That’s the American dream. Right? That’s what the President of the United States should exemplify in his actions. Right?
Then how does one explain the individuals who represent the abject failures of financial and regulatory theory chosen by the President to dominate the dialogue on financial reform. How does one reconcile President Obama appointing Lawrence Summers as head of the National Economic Council after Mr. Summers played a central role in rolling back the safeguards that led to the current financial crisis.
This is what Mr. Summers had to say at the November 12, 1999 signing ceremony for the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, the draconian legislation that repealed the Glass-Steagall Act and allowed commercial banks holding insured deposits to merge with investment banks, brokerage firms and insurance companies: the very same combinations that led to the 1929 stock market crash and ensuing Great Depression:
“Let me welcome you all here today for the signing of this historic legislation. With this bill, the American financial system takes a major step forward towards the 21st century, one that will benefit American consumers, business, and the national economy for many years to come…I believe we have all found the right framework for America's future financial system.”
Mr. Summers was wrong. This was not the “framework for America’s future” but the framework for epic financial collapse. Why isn’t Mr. Summers in an unemployment line along with the millions of Americans his bad judgment call put out of work.
Then there is Neal Wolin, confirmed by President Obama as Deputy Secretary of the Treasury on May 19, 2009. Writing in the San Francisco Chronicle on November 19, 2009, Robert Scheer had this to say about Wolin:
“Wolin, Geithner and Summers were all proteges of Robert Rubin, who, as Clinton's treasury secretary, was the grand author of the strategy of freeing Wall Street firms from their Depression-era constraints. It was Wolin who, at Rubin's behest, became a key force in drafting the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which ended the barrier between investment and commercial banks and insurance companies, thus permitting the new financial behemoths to become too big to fail. Two stunning examples of such giants that had to be rescued with public funds are Citigroup bank, where Rubin went to ‘earn’ $120 million after leaving the Clinton White House, and the Hartford Insurance Co., where Wolin landed after he left Treasury.”
Rounding out the list of those who got it wrong in the Clinton administration who have been brought back to get it wrong again in the Obama administration: Gary Gensler, one of those supporting the de-regulation of derivatives under Clinton, now head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission under President Obama; Gene Sperling, thanked by Lawrence Summers in the opening remarks at the signing of the legislation to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act, now counselor to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner; and, of course, Geithner himself, former President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York who served under Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers in Clinton’s Treasury Department from 1999 to 2001.
Many Americans have suspected for some time that meritocracy has died an uncelebrated death and was quietly laid to rest in a paupers’ graveyard. Many Americans also believe something has gone terribly wrong not just with our economic model but the moral compass that guides that economic model.
Today, authors of the book, “The Meritocracy Myth,” Stephen J. McNamee and Robert K. Milller have studied meritocracy patterns in America and concluded the following:
“To get ahead in America, it no doubt helps to be bright, shrewd, to work hard, and to have the right combination of attitudes that maximize success within given fields of endeavor. Playing by the rules, however, probably works to suppress prospects for economic success since those who play by the rules are more restricted in their opportunities to attain wealth and income than those who choose to ignore the rules.”
Without realizing it, McNamee and Miller have just unraveled the secret to the wealth gap and rising inequality in America: the memo that the rules can be ignored was only selectively distributed to Americans. I didn’t get it; did you?
I can tell you for certain that the play-by-the-rules-waiver memo was selectively distributed leading up to the June 25 and June 26, 1998 public hearings at the Federal Reserve on usurping the role of the legislative branch of the government by letting the Federal Reserve decide if it would repeal the Glass-Steagall Act by permitting the merger of Travelers and Citicorp to form Citigroup.
Chuck Prince, the man who planned Citigroup CEO Sandy Weill’s lavish birthday parties and was haplessly placed in the role of Citigroup CEO when Weill stepped down years later, testified as follows on June 25: “I do want to emphasize, however, that we do not seek and do not require any change in the law in order to consummate this merger.”
Mr. Prince was a lawyer. Mr. Prince knew the above statement to be false. Mr. Prince had gotten the memo: playing by the rules restricts opportunities to attain wealth and income so shred the rules.
Matthew Lee, also a lawyer representing Inner City Press/Fair Finance Watch did not get the memo that legal ethics, the legislative branch, and the truth could all be ignored at a Federal hearing.
Mr. Lee testified as follows:
“…we think [the merger application] should be dismissed based on improper communications that have taken place between Travelers, Citicorp and the Federal Reserve Board. Prior to the deal even being announced and the application being submitted, not only did the two CEOs of the two institutions meet with Chairman Greenspan, we found that, in fact, there was very detailed preapproval sought for particular practices…We think it is tainted.”
No one appearing on Panel 5 on June 25 had received the rules-waiver memo either. The fact that the merger was “illegal” was stated six times by four panel members. Mark Silverman of Citicorp-Travelers Watch, a coalition of community groups formed at that time to scrutinize the proposed merger, testified as follows:
“…the merger is illegal. The affiliation between Citibank, as a member bank of the Federal Reserve Board and Travelers’ subsidiaries that are engaged principally in securities dealings is simply prohibited by the Glass-Steagall Act…If the Board approves this merger prior to any change in the law, Congress, pressured by Citigroup and concerned about the consequences of a forced divestiture, can enact one of the most embarrassingly blatant pieces of private-interest legislation in recent memory…the Board risks undermining the legitimacy of itself and the legislature..”
Hilary Botein, at the time Associate Director of the Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project (NEDAP) said the Federal Reserve Board would “make a mockery of the regulatory process by allowing Citicorp and Travelers to brazenly violate existing law.”
Sarah Ludwig, then Coordinator of the New York City Community Reinvestment Task Force stated that if the Federal Reserve signed off on the merger it would “constitute an affront to the public, and underscore that large and powerful corporations influence government decision making even to the point of obtaining approval on illegal transactions…Secondly, approving the application would constitute hideously unsound policy….”
Josh Zinner, a lawyer at the time with South Brooklyn Legal Services’ Foreclosure Prevention Project, testified as follows:
“We represent low-income seniors who have been ripped off by high-rate finance companies… We haven’t heard any testimony today about Commercial Credit Corporation. This is an entity of Travelers Group…This type of high-rate lending that Commercial Credit does can often lead to foreclosure, if abusive, and, in fact, the Primerica Financial Services [also owned by Travelers] is selling Commercial Credit loans in the billions of dollars using this completely, loosely-regulated sales force with the same sort of A.O. Williams evangelical fervor. Again, the data shows, and this data will be submitted with a comment that Commercial Credit does high-rate lending in the same communities that Citibank has been redlining… the engine for marketing Commercial Credit loans is an unregulated pyramid scheme…”
Mr. Zinner could not have been more prescient. Commercial Credit changed its name to CitiFinancial and operates 2,000 storefronts across America bearing that angelic halo logo. But far from angelic, this is how a former Assistant Manager, Gail Kubiniec, said business was done in testimony to the FTC in July, 2001:
“At CitiFinancial, emphasis was placed on marketing new loans, particularly real estate loans (loans secured by a home mortgage), to present borrowers of CitiFinancial. Employees would receive quarterly incentives, called ‘Rocopoly Money,’ based on how many present borrowers they ‘renewed’ (refinanced) into new loans…Typically, employees would only state the total monthly payment amount in selling a proposed loan. Additional information, such as the interest rate, and the financed points and fees, closing costs, and ‘add-ons’ like credit insurance, were only disclosed when demanded by the borrower…It was also common practice to try to sell borrowers the largest loan possible…All CitiFinancial branch offices had quotas for the sale of credit insurance…Loans were typically presented to consumers with ‘100 per cent coverage,’ meaning that real estate loans were presented with at least credit life and disability already included, and personal loans were presented with at least credit life, disability, involuntary unemployment, and property insurance already included. When quoting the monthly payment, I frequently quoted the payment with coverages already included, telling the consumer only that it was ‘fully protected.’ This was a common practice used by employees at CitiFinancial…The pressure to sell coverages came from CitiFinancial’s Regional and District Managers. Each branch had monthly credit insurance sales goals to meet…If these goals were not met, the District Manager would call and put pressure on the Branch Manager to get the branch up to par.”
I tracked down Josh Zinner last week. He’s now Co-Director of the Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project. I asked Mr. Zinner for his reflections on the state of financial reform today, given that Citigroup is now a financial ward of the American taxpayer. The day he responded, March 31, Citigroup had just sold a majority stake in Primerica common stock to the public.
Mr. Zinner states:
"Citi's sale of Primerica, long known for its aggressive marketing of junk financial products in low income communities, is a coda to the disastrous Citi-Travelers merger. Those who were working on the ground in low income communities at the time knew very well that this super-merger would only serve to perpetuate and institutionalize unfair financial practices, exemplified by a two-tiered financial services system where poor people and people of color were paying far more for inferior financial products. The Citi-Travelers debacle should be a lesson that the financial services marketplace cannot police itself and that only strong and comprehensive financial regulation -- including an independent consumer financial protection agency and the return of Glass-Steagall firewalls -- can prevent the next financial meltdown."
I next turned to Matthew Lee of Inner City Press who has been tirelessly pursuing justice against Citigroup and its subprime subsidiaries since the merger. In 2004, Mr. Lee published a novel called “Predatory Bender: A Story of Subprime Finance.” The story is built around a corporation called EmpiBank; its Chairman is Sandaford Vyle. It also has a storefront subprime lender called EmpiFinancial. The book is, of course, more poignant today than in 2004. It comes with a non-fiction, must-read afterward titled “Predatory Lending: Toxic Credit in the Inner City.”
I asked Mr. Lee for his thoughts, given that even when Citigroup fails on its own hubris as testament that the public has spoken about its business model, it’s resuscitated back to life by the government. Mr. Lee was as forthright as always:
“When Travelers met and swallowed Citicorp in 1998, the Federal Reserve didn't just approve an illegal merger -- it illegally pre-approved an illegal merger. Sandy Weill and John Reed and their lawyers got the green light from the Alan Greenspan Fed before even announcing the merger. The group I worked and work with, Inner City Press/Fair Finance Watch demanded all records of the meetings, but got only two cryptic letters, talking about the marriage of ‘Red’ and ‘Blue.’ [Travelers’ logo was a red umbrella; Citicorp had a blue logo.] At the shareholders' meetings on the deal, my question to Sandy Weill resulted in a Citicorp official threatening to try to take away my law license. The Fed approved, and predatory lending took off. And now in the aftermath, even the Chris Dodd bill would house consumer protection inside the same Federal Reserve, a huge mistake. Red and Blue indeed...”
If financial behemoths collapse from hubris and corruption and lack of meritocracy, why wouldn’t government administrations do the same? President Obama needs to sack the financial wizards who got it wrong and add the common sense folks who got it right.
Pam Martens worked on Wall Street for 21 years; she has no security position, long or short, in any company mentioned in this article. She writes on public interest issues from New Hampshire. She can be reached at [email protected]
The Most Vital Ingredient in Wall Street Reform Goes Missing
http://www.counterpunch.com/martens03262010.html
Senator Dodd, Put Back That Wall!
The Most Vital Ingredient in Wall Street Reform Goes Missing
By PAM MARTENS
Last Fall, it was all about the wall: financial bigwigs like former Federal Reserve Chair Paul Volcker, former Citigroup co-CEO John Reed, Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, all espoused reestablishing the legal barrier between the derivatives casino that masquerades today as Wall Street and commercial banks holding insured deposits.
It made good sense: the wall goes up in 1933, America becomes the premier financial center for 66 years. The wall comes down in 1999, the financial system collapses exactly 9 years later with the precise characteristics of the massive Wall Street swindles that occurred in the late 1920s when there was also no wall.
But the wall has now gone missing in the current financial reform bill advanced out of the Senate Banking Committee by its Chairman, Senator Christopher Dodd. Equally noteworthy, the historic 1933 legislation that built the essential wall between flim-flam securities salesmen and Aunt Tilly’s insured bank account, commonly known as the Glass-Steagall Act, has gone missing itself from the internet. To underscore how extraordinary this is, if you put “Glass-Steagall Act” in the Google search box, it brings up 220,000 hits. And, yet, it is next to impossible to find the actual text of the legislation on the internet.
The Glass-Steagall Act (officially known as the Banking Act of 1933, Public Law 66-73, or H.R. 5661) is one of the most important pieces of financial legislation ever passed in this country. In addition to walling off the predators of Wall Street, it is less commonly known that Glass-Steagall created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) to implement the monetary policy of the Federal Reserve, and dramatically revised the Federal Reserve Act to prevent Wall Street perversions rooted out in the investigations conducted by the Senate Committee on Banking and Currency from 1932 to 1934. Given its landmark status and current attention, one would expect it to be available in a flick of a keystroke on any search engine.
The for-profit on-line law repositories offer only what’s left of the Act in the U.S. Code after its bones were picked clean by the Gramm- Leach- Bliley Act (also known as the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999). Case law offers a few sentences dealing with the separation of securities firms and national banks. Wikipedia has no link to the text of the legislation, clearly because its editors couldn’t find one. The FDIC, created under the Act, says on its web site you can drop in to its Library in Washington, D.C. if you’d like to look at the legislation. Cornell Law’s massive on-line library has this to say when you click on the Law:
Unfortunately, public sources of the Statutes at Large leave a lot out. The Library of Congress has mounted volumes 1-18 (to 1874) as part of its American Memory collection. The Government Printing Office took responsibility for the Statutes in 1875, but has only made electronic versions available from 1995 onward (volumes 109 and up).
The National Archives offers a digital copy of the first and last page of the document. (I sensed a tad of condescension in the suggestion that Americans can be placated with a title page and a signature page while the guts of our legislation are reserved for the lobbyists.) I sent an email to the National Archives asking for the full legislation. The following response arrived a few days later from an archivist , Jane Fitzgerald:
“We have just received your email inquiry regarding digital images of
the rest of the Banking Act of 1933. Unfortunately, the Banking Act of 1933 (Public Law 73-66 of June 16, 1933) consists of a total of 45 pages in length and we currently only have existing images of the first and signature pages.
“Black and white scans of the remaining pages may be ordered for $35.00 a page…”
To get a copy of public legislation from a publicly funded institution would cost $35.00 x 43 pages or $1505.00. Welcome to the new reality of wealth, privilege and access in America. I responded with another email requesting that the full document be made immediately available to the public at no charge, noting that:
“The text of the Banking Act of 1933…will help shine the light forward for our current Congress. That's what historical documents are for: to guide us toward a future devoid of the horrific mistakes of the past. Locking away this document and charging $35 a page insults the mandate of the National Archives. In fact, it is abhorrent to a participatory democracy.”
Thus far, I have not heard back from the National Archives. After four days of web searching, phone calls, and emails with no results, I had an epiphany. I remembered where I had once accessed rare documents from the 1930s. I located the full legislation on line with no charge involved for printing the document or downloading it. I copied it from the site and will be happy to email the Act to anyone who sends me an email with the subject line, “Save Glass-Steagall From Extinction.” (I hesitate to give out the web location for fear the repository that has given the legislation a home will suffer a buyout by Wall Street shortly upon the news leaking out. I say this only half jokingly.)
What’s in this legislation that’s worthy of vanquishing it from the annals of history? Each section reveals how Congress had to police with new laws a Wall Street functioning as organized crime on steroids. And it leads a direct path of inquiry to the 12,000 pages holed up in the National Archives where the Senate Committee on Banking and Currency took two years of testimony under oath from 1932 to 1934 from the captains of illicit finance, received 1375 completed questionnaires from stock exchange members, subpoenaed cancelled checks from members of the financial press who had been bribed by Wall Street players, and obtained “preferred lists” where public office holders were routinely bribed with hot stock offerings.
In other words, it highlights the type of in-depth investigation our current Congress has not done as it stumbles around in the dark writing reform legislation with no evidentiary support for what it needs to reform.
Wall Street honchos who want the Federal Reserve to remain as their coddling regulator particularly fear public attention to Section 20 of the Glass-Steagall Act. This is a verbatim quote from that hard-to-locate original legislation:
“After one year from the date of the enactment of this Act, no member bank shall be affiliated in any manner described in section 2(b) hereof with any corporation, association, business trust, or other similar organization engaged principally in the issue, flotation, underwriting, public sale, or distribution at wholesale or retail or through syndicate participation of stocks, bonds, debentures, notes, or other securities.” [Italic emphasis added.]
This pesky passage might now renew questions as to whether the Federal Reserve Board broke the law in 1998 when it approved the merger of a massive securities firm (Travelers/Salomon Smith Barney) with a member bank holding insured deposits (Citibank). That institution is now a welfare ward of the taxpayer. Salomon was an investment bank engaged in underwriting all the kinds of securities forbidden by Glass-Steagall to become affiliated with a member bank; Smith Barney was a brokerage firm engaged in the public sale of the securities not allowed under Glass-Steagall to be affiliated with a member bank. The Fed blew off these serious matters with the following statement in its letter approving the merger:
“…Travelers controls several domestic subsidiaries that cannot be affiliated with a Bank under Section 20 of the Glass-Steagall Act (12 U.S.C. 377). These companies engage in securities underwriting and dealing activities, distributing shares of open-end mutual funds, and controlling open-end mutual funds. Travelers has committed to conform the activities of these companies to the requirements of the Glass-Steagall Act and the Board’s orders and interpretations there under, including the limitations on the amount of revenue derived from securities underwriting and dealing activities, on consummation of the proposed transaction in accordance with the requirements of this order.”
The Federal Reserve approved the merger on September 23, 1998. Glass-Steagall was not repealed until November 12, 1999. In between, Smith Barney’s army of stockbrokers did not stop selling securities to the public and the firm’s proprietary mutual funds continued to be distributed to the public.
If the Federal Reserve brazenly and knowingly ignored the law in acquiescence to a serial misfeasor, why should Americans trust it to have any role whatsoever in bank regulation and, especially not appropriate, a Consumer Financial Protection Agency housed under the Fed as envisioned by Senator Dodd’s proposed legislation.
Last November, Senator Dodd called the Fed an “abysmal failure” in terms of its regulation of banks and consumer protection. His draft bill at that time correctly stripped the Fed of banking and consumer oversight. Today, Senator Dodd’s bill elevates the “abysmal failure” Fed to trusted guardian of the largest and most dangerous banks in the country alongside oversight of a consumer protection agency. Senator Dodd had his facts impeccably correct in November. Who or what changed Senator Dodd’s mind in the ensuing four months?
Once the Travelers/Citicorp merger created Citigroup, other Wall Street firms had to buy insured depositor banks in order to compete against the massive pools of money housed under the Citi umbrella as it was allowed to gobble up bank after bank. The Fed set this doomsday machine in motion and the taxpayers are now footing the crushing bill to shore up zombie securities firms on top of staggering investment losses, job losses, foreclosures and growing homelessness. Consumers were promised one-stop shopping at these behemoths; they ended up in the role of busboys at the predator’s ball.
In 1998 when the barbarians were charging the wall, 425 individuals testified in person or in writing to the Federal Reserve on the application by Travelers and Citicorp to merge to create Citigroup. A small number correctly predicted this financial calamity would result. That same small number wasn’t getting cash from Citicorp or Travelers. The majority of politicians and nonprofits who testified in favor of the proposal were recipients of largesse from one or the other of the corporations.
Why was the Federal Reserve Board conducting hearings on a proposal that was patently illegal under existing law? To mute public outrage over the brazenness of that detail alone, the press was fed the following story line: don’t focus on the bold violations of law under the Glass-Steagall Act, focus instead on the Bank Holding Company Act which allows a two-year window for Travelers to divest its insurance subsidiaries; an eventuality that Citigroup correctly bet would be moot if it could get its Washington insiders like Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin to muscle through repeal of Glass-Steagall before the two-year deadline arrived.)
The Federal Reserve may have also felt empowered by the stunning editorial in the New York Times on April 8, 1998, putting white hats on the pirates and dubbing financial concentration and repeal of investor protection law a good thing that “could actually protect naïve investors.” The New York Times had not only sipped the Citigroup Kool Aid and found it pleasing, it was adding new flavors of its own to the packaging:
“Congress dithers, so John Reed of Citicorp and Sanford Weill of Travelers Group grandly propose to modernize financial markets on their own. They have announced a $70 billion merger -- the biggest in history -- that would create the largest financial services company in the world, worth more than $140 billion… In one stroke, Mr. Reed and Mr. Weill will have temporarily demolished the increasingly unnecessary walls built during the Depression to separate commercial banks from investment banks and insurance companies.”
“Increasingly unnecessary walls?” Citibank had a history of money laundering for dictators. Salomon Smith Barney was the successor firm responsible for rigging the two-year Treasury note auction and “yield burning,” another illegal maneuver involving Treasury securities and municipal bonds. Those walls were all that stood between one criminal culture with insured deposits merging with more creative criminals. Fused together, they took their widow and orphans’ passbooks and conjured up rigged research, subprime mortgage securitizations, credit default swaps, auction rate securities, Dr. Evil trades, and Enron off-balance-sheet debt bombs.
The New York Times continues:
“Some consumer advocates oppose the merger because, they fear, financial behemoths inevitably threaten ordinary consumers. But one-stop financial shopping could actually protect naive investors. Under current laws such investors can be pulled in contradictory directions by bankers offering retirement accounts, insurance agents offering annuities and securities dealers offering mutual funds. An institution that sells all these products can steer customers toward the product that best serves their needs…A collapse in the company's securities and insurance operations could drag down its commercial bank. But that will happen only if Federal regulators fall sound asleep.”
Did the Federal Reserve fall sound asleep? Or was it compromised to begin with? As for steering customers toward the product that best serves their needs, for the last eight decades Wall Street has incentivized through its broker commission structure its goal of selling what it needs to dump on the public irrespective of what best serves the public’s needs. The only hope of changing that reality is a regulator with teeth and a mighty wall that separates speculation and risk taking from savings earmarked for safety.
The similarity of the dynamics of the 1929 crash and the 2008 crash is reflected in this passage from the Senate Committee on Banking and Currency in 1934, Report No. 1455:
“The Banking Act of 1933, enacted on June 16, 1933, was promulgated to effect a complete severance of the commercial and investment banking functions and to eradicate many of the abuses disclosed at the hearings before the Senate subcommittee…The hearings disclosed, on the part of many bankers, a woeful lack of regard for the public interest and a proper conception of fiduciary responsibility. Personages upon whom the public relied for the guardianship of funds did not regard their position as impregnated with trust, but rather as a means for personal gain. These custodians of funds gambled and speculated for their own account in the stock of the banking institutions which they dominated; participated in speculative transactions in the capital stock of their banking institutions that directly conflicted with the interest of these institutions which they were paid to serve; participated in and were the beneficiaries of pool operations;… availed themselves, as directors of private corporations, of inside information to aid them in transactions in the securities of these corporations; caused to be paid by the banking institutions to themselves excessive compensation; had voted to themselves participations in management funds and substantial pensions; and resorted to devious means to avoid the payment of their just Government taxes…Far from having a detrimental, subservice effect upon the banking institutions of the country, the investigation performed the wholesome function of exposing the ills and evils of banking conditions and the perpetrators of these wrongs, with a view to the elimination of both the undesirable practices and personalities.”
Senator Dodd, members of Congress, you know what you have to do. Put back the wall, then on to real Senate investigations under oath.
Pam Martens worked on Wall Street for 21 years; she has no security position, long or short, in any company mentioned in this article. She writes on public interest issues from New Hampshire. She can be reached at [email protected]
http://www.counterpunch.com/martens03262010.html
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Summers expects financia overhaul to pass/ Senator Dodd... - 
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