Jon Stewart takes a look at how the big banks made a boatload of money in the first quarter: take the federal government’s bailout money and loan it back to the government — and charge interest. Watch.
TPM Reader TS chimes in on Specter/Sestak …
I am a Democrat living in Pennsylvania and wanted to chime in on the Sestak/Specter primary.
Words cannot describe how brutal that “I changed parties which will enable me to be… reelected” ad that Sestak is running. It is just devastating. The way Specter pronounces “reelected” makes him sound pompous in the extreme.
Dahlia Lithwick, on what the Elena Kagan pick says about Obama’s judicial philosophy, or the lack thereof.
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer has created a new panel to combat “mistruths” about the Arizona immigration bill. The state is also putting up $250,000 for a new marketing campaign which will start by urging more Arizonans to go on vacation in Arizona.
What if the out-of-control wellhead on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico was belching out 14 times as much crude oil as the government and BP have been saying? It may not be just a “what if.”
If we’ve really got our best and brightest working on this problem, can’t we at least get an accurate flow rate of what’s coming out of the pipe. I’m no engineer, but that’s fairly straightforward math, isn’t it? Read More
Our Brian Beutler gets Republican senators to open up about their belief that yes the bailouts really did work like a charm. Just please don’t tell anyone!
Perfect timing. Slipping Connecticut Senate candidate Linda McMahon rolls out new campaign mailer pushing to end the state’s economic woes with lots more offshore drilling.
How much oil is there in Long Island Sound?
Obama, on Republicans: “So after they drove their car into the ditch, made it as difficult as possible for us to pull it back, now they want the keys back. No! They can’t drive!” That and the day’s other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.
North Dakota’s Byron Dorgan is retiring after this year. He doesn’t have much to lose. Financial reform has been one of his pet projects for years. He’s not shy about pointing out that he predicted the financial crisis in a 1994 Washington Monthly cover story warning of the hazards of derivatives.
Still, Dorgan had been relatively muted in his criticism of the financial reform bill cobbled together by Sen. Christopher Dodd, who is also retiring this year and who sees financial reform as his crowning achievement. But things had been bubbling behind the scenes. Dorgan was especially upset that his proposed amendment to the financial reform bill wouldn’t even get a vote. His amendment would prohibit naked credit default swaps, which Dorgan views as little more than pure gambling by the big banks, not a way to hedge their financial risks, but merely placing bets on other people’s bets.
Dorgan took to the Senate floor yesterday with a floor speech that ripped the financial reform bill as not real reform (video). Read More