A tsunami – a tidal wave of devastating proportions –begins with a catastrophic event that is often thousands of miles distant. While attention is rooted on the event itself – say, an earthquake – the wave is submerged in the deep ocean so that the surface is barely disturbed… until the tsunami reaches shallower coastal waters. As the ocean bottom rises, the wave becomes visible, then towering, until it comes ashore and obliterates everything in its path.

I believe a political tsunami of vast proportions is heading towards Washington, D.C. You wouldn’t know it from its inhabitants, who seem to be unaware of what is coming their way. But unless they wake up and take action to redirect the energy of the approaching wave, we’re going to see a cataclysmic change in Washington next year. Continue reading “The Great Tsunami of 2010” »

One year and trillions of dollars later, the amount of money banks and credit card companies are lending to consumers is shrinking, while big corporations and Wall Street are awash in dough – our dough. Continue reading “Heads I Can Borrow, Tails You Can’t” »

Last May, members of Congress and many consumer advocates were hailing the new credit card reform law as a great boon for consumers.

I didn’t share the exuberance, as I wrote at the time. 

Six months later, it’s clear that Congress rolled over for the financial industry on key points.

The new law doesn’t address the most serious abuses of the greed-driven credit card companies – there’s no cap on interest rates, for example.

Worse, it opened up a loophole that let the pigs run wild for another nine months: Congress wrote the bill so that it takes effect next year but left Americans defenseless to all sorts of shenanigans by the credit card companies until then. Continue reading “Congress’s Credit Card “Reform” Left Consumers Unprotected” »