WaPo:
J.P. Morgan Chase, an amalgam of some of Wall Street’s most storied institutions, now holds more than $1 of every $10 on deposit in this country. So does Bank of America, scarred by its acquisition of Merrill Lynch and partly government-owned as a result of the crisis, as does Wells Fargo, the biggest West Coast bank. Those three banks, plus government-rescued and -owned Citigroup, now issue one of every two mortgages and about two of every three credit cards, federal data show.
A year after the near-collapse of the financial system last September, the federal response has redefined how Americans get mortgages, student loans and other kinds of credit and has made a national spectacle of executive pay. But no consequence of the crisis alarms top regulators more than having banks that were already too big to fail grow even larger and more interconnected.
The general election to decide Ted Kennedy’s successor will be held in late January, with the primaries in December. That and the day’s other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.
I just noticed RNC Chair Michael Steele just challenged AARP to endorse his ‘Senior’s Health Care Bill of Rights” which purportedly outlaws death panels and similar such things. And John Rother replied saying AARP too agrees there should be no death panels and is glad no one has actually proposed having any.
But with Steele now on the ramparts defending Medicare, we thought it might be a good time to review Steele’s and the GOP’s forty year history of trying to cut or outright abolish Medicare.
From TPM Reader DK …
I could be wrong, but I get the feeling Obama’s approval is directly linked to Health Care. I definitely cooled to him quite a bit, and it’s due to the fact that he doesn’t seem willing to reform financial institutions or go for the gold on the public option.
Nate Silver wrote a post last night flagging an AARP poll, the upshot of which is that Americans don’t seem to have any idea what the ‘public option’ even is. As Silver notes, the fact that only 37% of respondents correctly identified what the ‘public option’ was, and the fact that respondents were only given three options, shows that random guessing would have produced pretty much the same result.
As I said yesterday, the fact that ‘public option’ is so un-descriptive and opaque has only made it easier for Republicans to portray it as some sort of program for mass euthanasia. So I’m not sure what there is to say here or do but laugh because the only other thing to do is cry.
But it does make you wonder why Democrats go into these political battles with dopey wonk-speak when Republicans are coming up with stuff like “death panels”, which, despite being a complete fantasy, does tend to focus the attention.
Bonner & Associates, the DC astroturfing outfit that got caught sending out forged ‘constituent letters’ has a new angle on the scandal: they’re the victims.
Candidate in Idaho governor’s race jokes about getting “tags” to hunt Barack Obama.
Massachusetts Republicans won’t rule out a possible court challenge to any attempt to amend state law to allow a speedy interim appointment to Sen. Kennedy’s seat. Eric Kleefeld gets the story from the GOP leader in the state senate.