Category Archives: William K. Black

NEP’s Bill Black appears on The Real News Network and says don’t expect much – sadly, the British Serious ‘Farce’ Office that brought about the charges may not have the wits to carry out the prosecution. You can view with transcript here.

By William K. Black
June 6, 2017     Bloomington, MN

Rupert Murdoch controls the Wall Street Journal and Fox News.  Even before he acquired the WSJ its editorial board was known for its members’ ultra-right wing fervor.  The acquisition intensified that fervor.  The editorial board’s fervor has infected the WSJ’s news pages.  That is the context essential to understanding the significance of its June 6, 2017 editorial eviscerating President Donald Trump.  They entitled their editorial “The Buck Stops Everywhere Else.”  Here is the most damning paragraph.   .

If this pattern continues, Mr. Trump may find himself running an Administration with no one but his family and the Breitbart staff. People of talent and integrity won’t work for a boss who undermines them in public without thinking about the consequences. And whatever happened to the buck stops here?

In addition to the obvious slam, consider several aspects of the content, tone, and timing of the editorial.  They published it on the anniversary of D-Day, a day of courage and personal responsibility.  Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Allied commander of the invasion and future president of the United States, took a large gamble on the weather clearing enough to allow the invasion to occur.  The editorial, appropriately, given tight word count limits, did not explain what so many adult Americans recall – the last sentence of Eisenhower’s statement to the public in the event the invasion failed.  He personally drafted the statement.

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NEP’s Bill Black talks to The Real News Network and explains the history and dynamics of FBI investigations, which show that they are not as unstoppable or unimpeachable as they are being made out to be. You can view with transcript here.

NEP’s Bill Black appears on The Real News Network discussing Trump’s appointment of Craig S. Phillips, who contributed to the 2008 financial crisis at Morgan Stanley, to take care of FannieMae and FreddieMac. You can view with a transcript here.

By William K. Black
April 17, 2017     Bloomington, MN

William Cohan’s April 14, 2017 column in the New York Times discusses Daniel Tarullo’s swan song talk on bank regulation.  Here are the key passages from that column for the first half of my discussion.

Much to the relief of Wall Street executives, who feared and hated him in equal measure, Daniel K. Tarullo left his powerful perch on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors last week, but not before delivering one last lecture on how big banks should be regulated in his absence.

His swan song was pretty surprising, all things considered. It also went largely unnoticed, much like Mr. Tarullo himself during his eight years at the Federal Reserve. Many people have never heard of him, even though his decisions affected their lives in ways big and small.

Once described as the “Wizard of Oz,” for the power he wielded behind the scenes, Mr. Tarullo was appointed to the Federal Reserve by President Barack Obama in January 2009. At the Fed, Mr. Tarullo took over the important responsibility of regulating the big Wall Street banks, a job that, understandably, had been the purview of the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The oversight moved to Washington from New York in the wake of the financial crisis.

“It was obvious that a lot in the U.S. regulatory system had not worked particularly well before the crisis,” Mr. Tarullo said in a 2015 interview with The Wall Street Journal.

Cohan was writing about a different subject, one I discuss briefly in the second half of this article, so he did not discuss the insanity described in these four paragraphs.  Here is the short version of that insanity.

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