On February 25, 2003, Phil Donahue's MSNBC talk show was canceled by MSNBC for "low viewership" (it was # 1, beating out Chris Matthews) but the real reason was his outspoken opposition to Bush's invasion of Iraq.
Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard law professor and bankruptcy expert who is in charge of setting up the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is the perfect person to be named as it's first chairperson, so says Nobel Prize winning Prof.Paul Krugman.
Representative Barney Frank, one of the co-creators of the Bureau also thinks so, and thinks she can win that appointment, but it would be a close vote,and he doesn't think the President is willing to fight for something he isn't sure of winning.
AKIN: Now, Social Security through the years, for many many people, has been a terrible investment. It's really a tax, that's all it is. Social Security is a tax. The government has taken the tax. There's been more money coming in than going out. And we spend it. That's not been responsible. I don't like it . I didn't design Social Security. It actually came from Bismarck, FDR put it in place.
A fragile peace pact between the government and Britain's top banks has fractured as the Bank of England's governor, Mervyn King, delivered a scathing rebuke to top financiers for taking big bonuses while exploiting "gullible or unsuspecting" customers.
In an attack that drew an angry reaction from the Square Mile, King suggested that "imbalances" in the banking system are beginning to grow again, posing a risk of another credit crunch.
The governor, who will get broad powers to regulate the banking industry when the Financial Services Authority is abolished next year, accused high-street lenders of taking a short-term view to "simply maximise profits next week". And he asked: "Why do banks in general want to pay bonuses? It's because they live in a 'too big to fail' world in which the state will bail them out on the downside."
The only reliable way of neutralizing the threat is to break up big financial institutions. We have come out of 2008 with the political power of the biggest firms enhanced rather than decreased. There is little political support for breaking up big companies, but we will regret that failure eventually. Twin Cities Pioneer Press