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August 04, 2022 | The American Prospect

Timi Iwayemi

Op-Ed Congressional OversightCryptocurrencyFinancial Regulation

Proposed Stablecoin Legislation Is Worse Than Nothing

Better still, the government could consider more aggressive action. Application of existing law would bring some stability to the stablecoin space, but there is one more simple and effective option: banning them outright. Stablecoins are an essential component of a deeply fraudulent industry that is financially and environmentally destructive. Guaranteeing their existence is an unnecessary risk.

July 26, 2022

Timi Iwayemi

Press Release CoronavirusIntellectual PropertyPharma

Advocates to President Biden: Don’t Give Away New Publicly-Owned Coronavirus Vaccine Technology to Corporations

In advance of the White House Summit on the Future of COVID-19 Vaccines today, 29 groups including Public Citizen, Demand Progress and Revolving Door Project, a project of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, sent a letter to President Joe Biden urging him to ensure that pan coronavirus vaccine technology currently under development by the U.S. military remain public, and shared with the world.

July 26, 2022

Timi Iwayemi

Letter CoronavirusIntellectual PropertyPharma

Activists to Biden: Share Walter Reed Army Vaccine With the World

If the Walter Reed vaccine proves effective against Covid-19 and its variants in further tests, it will be a vaccine wholly created by a public institution through use of public funds. Every aspect of the vaccine production process should be widely and freely shared to ensure globally distributed manufacturing. Widespread, equitable availability of effective vaccines at truly affordable prices would go a long way in achieving your stated goal of vaccinating the world.

June 08, 2022

Timi Iwayemi

Press Release CryptocurrencyFinancial RegulationFintechIndependent Agencies

RELEASE: Lummis-Gillibrand Crypto Bill Is An Irresponsible Handout To The Crypto Industry

“The industry carve outs in this bill are a reminder of the danger of corporate influence in our political system. The crypto industry’s leading figures have spent enormous amounts to shield the industry from proper financial oversight. This money has been funneled towards revolving-door hiring of former CFTC officials, formation of super PACs, and congressional campaign donations. The industry has also bemoaned the SEC’s robust regulatory posture, decrying it with the self-defeating ostensible insult of ‘regulation by enforcement.’ That supposed criticism merely underlines the urgent need for the SEC to act. Existing law is clear, and it mandates that the SEC enforce existing statutory and regulatory limits that crypto bros have brazenly broken on the assumption that they will be able to buy clemency before they are sanctioned appropriately.”

June 06, 2022 | The American Prospect

Timi Iwayemi

Op-Ed CryptocurrencyEthics in GovernmentFinancial RegulationFintech

Sam Bankman-Fried’s Multimillion-Dollar Game

A leading voice in this push is Sam Bankman-Fried, 30-year-old CEO of crypto trading exchange FTX. Christened by some as a crypto prince and others as Washington’s aspiring kingmaker, Bankman-Fried has in the past year developed an extensive crypto policy agenda that entails revolving-door hiring of former CFTC officials, formation of super PACs, and congressional campaign donations.

April 14, 2022

Eleanor Eagan Timi Iwayemi

Blog Post CryptocurrencyEthics in GovernmentFederal ReserveFinancial RegulationFintechRevolving Door

Michael Barr is the Wrong Man to Stop the Next Financial Crisis

Over a decade after the financial crisis, few would still dispute that the revolving door between financial regulators and the financial industry helped pave the way for economic disaster. In the years preceding the crash, regulators who came from the country’s largest banks and planned to promptly return to them, removed regulatory restraints and turned a blind eye to the predictably dangerous effects (see, e.g. Robert Rubin and Alan Greenspan). In the next administration, different regulators drawn from the same well let the fraudsters off the hook and left the working people who had fallen victim to them out to dry.  

April 12, 2022 | The American Prospect

Timi Iwayemi Eleanor Eagan

Op-Ed CryptocurrencyEthics in GovernmentFinancial RegulationLarry SummersRevolving Door

Biden Must Block Crypto’s Access to the Revolving Door

Fortunately, Biden has the means to stop at least one aspect of crypto’s campaign in its tracks. Through an executive order, he can cut off crypto’s access to the revolving door by barring the officials who are involved in developing regulations for the digital assets industry from working for it for at least four years. By rights, it should be a bare-minimum anti-corruption standard.

March 07, 2022

Timi Iwayemi

Blog Post CryptocurrencyForeign PolicyTreasury Department

Obscure Agency Must Deny Russian Oligarchs Possible Crypto Sanction Evasion Tool

While it is unlikely that an economy as large as Russia’s can be rerouted through present crypto infrastructure, there remains opportunity for targeted individuals and entities to leverage the industry’s weak compliance mechanisms to move some of their assets. The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) and Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FINCEN), in conjunction with the White House’s National Security Council, need to ensure this does not happen. 

September 29, 2021 | The American Prospect

Fatou Ndiaye Timi Iwayemi

Op-Ed CoronavirusForeign PolicyJeff ZientsPharmaTrade Policy

How to Vaccinate the World

When United States Trade Representative Katherine Tai announced this past May that the U.S. would support the TRIPS waiver on COVID-19 vaccines at the World Trade Organization (WTO), we at the Revolving Door Project celebrated the administration’s decision as “a transformative, hopeful event.” The waiver proposal calls on the WTO’s Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Council to suspend intellectual-property protections on COVID-19 therapeutics, diagnostics, and vaccines to ensure materials necessary for combating the pandemic are “available promptly, in sufficient quantities and at affordable price to meet global demand.”