If there’s one takeaway from the news that the Federal Housing Finance Agency will sue a dozen big banks for peddling disastrously overvalued mortgage-backed securities in the the run-up to the financial crisis, it’s that the handful of major suits brought against Wall Street since 2008 have never been further from resolution. The FHFA, which [...]
Earlier this week, I attended the retirement ceremony of General David Petraeus at Fort Meyer. It was a landmark moment, the closing of a chapter–the decade after 9/11. I’ve written about the transformation of the U.S. Military at length, including a column about Petraeus’ intellectual impact on the Army and a cover story about how [...]
Oh, those religious people–always droning on and on about the poor. It’s like they have nothing else to do. (Other than getting arrested by the hundreds at the White House for protesting a proposed Canadian oil pipeline.) And it’s like the Bible told them to or something. If they love the poor so much, why [...]
The great economic stall has become literal: Zero net jobs were added in August as the unemployment rate remains at 9.1% The Federal Housing Finance Agency will sue a dozen megabanks over mortgage securitization, sliding in under the statute of limitations and complicating the states’ foreclosure fraud settlement talks. Banks are still fabricating mortgage documents. It’s been [...]
After a spring of embarrassing ephemera (remember Donald Trump’s painful presidential flirtation/publicity tour?) and a summer of high-octane campaign kickoffs (Michele Bachmann, Jon Huntsman) that haven’t sustained much momentum, Labor Day marks the real start of the race for the Republican presidential nomination. Barring any late entrants into the fray, the GOP field seems set. [...]
Michael Scherer’s story in our new issue offers a great window into the Obama White House’s plans for taking back the initiative this fall after a fairly dismal summer. Michael shared part of his reporting online with this item on the solace the Obama team is taking from the historical examples of Franklin Roosevelt and [...]
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Back in January, Tea Partying businessman Jack Kimball sprang an upset in New Hampshire, toppling an establishment-backed Republican to become the chair of the Granite State’s GOP. Kimball, 64, had a paper-thin political resume headlined by a losing bid for governor. But his purist politics won him fans within the state’s burgeoning Tea Party movement, [...]
The punditocracy has achieved consensus: given the latest crop of national horse-race polls, Mitt Romney can no longer hope to claim the Republican presidential nomination by default; he has no choice but to knock off Rick Perry. There’s just no real consensus on how exactly he should do it. A few of the current ideas [...]
In my print column this week, hidden behind the magic wonderwall, I indulge in a little presidential campaign history: Four years ago, in September 2007, John McCain–the eventual Republican nominee–was dead in the water, having raised and wasted a ton of money and fired most of his staff. Eight years ago, John Kerry–the eventual Democratic [...]
