Ethics in Government

Alumni of Gibson Dunn, the law firm that helped Chevron go after Steven Donziger, have influential executive branch jobs under Biden.

“Drastic action is necessary, because the prevailing assumption that what is going on at the Fed is a string of harmless, sloppy errors strikes us as wildly unsupported by the facts.”

Powell neglected to mention that he’d personally purchased shares that year in several actively-managed municipal bond funds, as a Revolving Door Project review of the Fed Chair and Vice Chairs’ 2020 financial disclosure forms shows.

We write to you as a broad coalition of organizations committed to holding corporations that engage in anti-competitive behavior accountable. For far too long, Washington has sat by as technology industry giants have accumulated monopoly power at the expense of consumers and competitors alike. The nomination of Jonathan Kanter to serve as Assistant Attorney General for the Department of Justice Antitrust Division is a strong step toward turning President Joe Biden’s vision of an open economy into reality.

The fact that the Fed’s current leadership team made or benefitted from multimillion dollar transactions contextualizes what we’ve seen at the Boston and Dallas regional banks: Chair Powell has facilitated a broad culture of lax ethical practices at the highest levels of the nation’s central bank.

Kaplan and Rosengren’s scandals aren’t the only ethics questions surrounding the Fed leadership’s conduct which merit greater scrutiny.

For those less familiar with the Carlyle Group, the private equity firm where Powell was a partner and senior lawyer from 1997 – 2005, here’s a quick overview of their history with capitalizing on political connections and the revolving door.

It really shouldn’t surprise anyone that a former Carlyle Group executive — a firm whose whole profit strategy is based on exploiting insider connections in the federal government — hasn’t prioritized ethics and oversight in running the nation’s largest stockpile of potentially market-moving information.

Economic consulting firms hire former officials to undermine antitrust efforts. Here’s how to stop that.

The letter calls on the university to implement fair disclosure requirements for its faculty and condemn the unethical practices of former Pritzker Dean Dr. Daniel Rodriguez.

Apparently, Harris just doesn’t get why regulators have to be so skeptical of the industry all the time—which makes sense, coming from a fintech executive who’s advocated for the industry on both sides of the revolving door.

A financial disclosure reveals that Special Envoy for Energy Affairs Amos Hochstein operated a shadow consultancy with foreign fossil fuel clients.

In a move cheered by progressives and antitrust reformers, President Biden has nominated Jonathan Kanter to serve as assistant attorney general for antitrust. Kanter’s nomination, alongside that of Lina Khan to lead the Federal Trade Commission earlier this year, is the latest sign that this administration is, for the first time in generations, fiercely committed to enforcing antitrust laws. However, this generation’s most notorious monopolies—Amazon, Facebook, and Google—are making it vividly clear that they will try anything to retain their power. That apparently includes lobbing poorly reasoned, transparently bad faith calls for their newly anointed foes to recuse themselves from relevant cases.

With the right staff at the helm, USDA’s Rural Development Division could be the key to rebuilding rural America.

SKDKnickerbocker more or less specializes in running interference for deeply awful companies when a Democratic administration might be inclined to have them face consequences for the harms they cause.