Financial Regulation

The FTX disaster should be all the impetus needed to kill off any new crypto industry–approved legislation. Instead, we need Congress to provide material support for financial regulators in the form of increased appropriations to guard against the next collapse. Much of the crypto industry is already subject to laws—the very ones that the SEC seeks to enforce and that the crypto industry broadly (not just Sam Bankman-Fried) seeks to evade by reducing the SEC’s jurisdiction ex post facto. Both the CFTC and SEC urgently need funds to fulfill their mandates. Crypto stretches these needs even further, but the need has existed for years. For decades, financial crimes have too often gone unpunished. This wasn’t for a lack of rules, but a lack of will, funds, and people willing to enforce them. Crypto doesn’t need special treatment, it needs to face the music.

At a critical juncture such as this where the industry seeks kid-glove treatment from regulators, backgrounds such as Harris’s should be disqualifying.

The White House does not need to hire someone to get a banker’s perspective on inflation.

The rapid meltdown of FTX stands as one of the most gruesome chapters in the annals of investment fiascos: think of the false technological promises of Elizabeth Holmes’s Theranos grift combined with the evaporation of Bernie Madoff’s prestigious Ponzi fund. But the saga of FTX involves much more than either the vanity and hubris of Holmes’s fraud offensive or the deceptive practices of the Madoff scam. The rapid rise and fall of Bankman-Fried points up the delusional character of information-age capitalism; Far from standing as an outlying trend within the crypto investment world, Bankman-Fried’s scam was nestled at the very heart of its prevailing business model.

White collar crooks are behind the campaign to kill the CFPB, but don’t expect the mainstream media to tell you that.

Big business could soon get their chance to kill the CFPB for good, thanks in part to former Obama aide William Daley.

Boosters of Ponzi products should not be granted the freedom to tout their products without ample pushback and skepticism. Because, as is all too common in Washington, when this media cover is combined with other forms of political pressure including lobbying and campaign donations, industry interests take precedence over the public’s. Politico knows where to find skeptical voices; they had Healthy Markets President and CEO Ty Gellasch on the panel that followed Alderoty’s remarks, albeit alongside three other preachers of crypto’s so-called greatness.

“This lawsuit is simply about big business’ personal fear of and resentment toward Rohit Chopra.”

This week: inflation hawks double down on brutal rate hikes that will harm workers and the mainstream media goes out of its way to undermine rail workers.

Rattner has ridden his seven months in the Obama White House to an extremely influential punditry career, in addition to the millions he rakes in as Bloomberg’s money manager.

Government officials in Congress and at independent agencies like the CFTC should focus on protecting consumers and ignore any entreaties from their former colleagues who now represent the industry’s interests.

It is a significant victory for the rule of law that former FDIC Chair Jelena McWilliams doesn’t get to just nullify the lawful vote of the Board even when she lost.

Chronic underfunding means that the agencies with the most laudable missions—the ones seeking to protect ordinary Americans from profit-driven exploitation—often struggle to go up against powerful corporate interests. Strengthening funding for enforcement to protect Americans from environmental, health, consumer, and labor standards violations is an existing, easily justifiable tool for changing that balance of power.