Trump Denies Paying SNAP Benefits To Remain 'Liquid'
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Obama Plan Improves Regulatory Structure but Doesn’t Address Accountability
By Dean Baker
June 17, 2009
There are many useful features of President Obama’s proposals for the reform of the regulatory system. Most notably, the plan to establish an agency to ensure that financial products are fair and transparent to consumers is a big step forward. Such an agency might have prevented many of the worst abuses in the subprime market.
The proposal to provide regulatory authorities with resolution powers for non-bank financial institutions is also a useful reform. Such powers would have greatly facilitated regulators’ efforts to deal with the collapse of Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and AIG.
This plan should also go far toward eliminating the sort of regulatory arbitrage that allowed firms to seek out the weakest regulators. It would have been desirable to have also included some sort of national consolidation of regulation of insurers, but that would have faced enormous political opposition. [In Full]
In response to the turmoil, the powerful Guardian Council - Iran's highest legislative body - has said it will to order a recount of votes cast in the country's disputed presidential election if it finds irregularities.A rehash from the other day, Juan Cole on Class Vs Culture wars in Iran:
Can the Guardian Council bring the country back together? If the vote recount goes ahead, will Mousavi's supporters accept the new result? [In Full, with a 23 minute video news analysis @ al Jazeera]
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Class v. Culture Wars in Iranian Elections: Rejecting Charges of a North Tehran Fallacy
Some comentators have suggested that the reason Western reporters were shocked when Ahmadinejad won was that they are based in opulent North Tehran, whereas the farmers and workers of Iran, the majority, are enthusiastic for Ahmadinejad. That is, we fell victim once again to upper middle class reporting and expectations in a working class country of the global south.
While such dynamics may have existed, this analysis is flawed in the case of Iran because it pays too much attention to class and material factors and not enough to Iranian culture wars. [In Full] (see his more recent posts for updates on the Iranian election)
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