banks

At the Washington Examiner, Tim Carney points to JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon's admission in an interview that the Dodd-Frank financial regulation law makes it "tougher for smaller players to enter the market." Dimon says the law widens the "moat" that surrounds big banks like JPMorgan and keep smaller banks from competing.

James Pethokoukis, writing at AEI Ideas:

Disclosure forms reveal that Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a member of Congress from Florida, previously held funds with investments in Swiss banks, foreign drug companies, and the state bank of India. This revelation comes mere days after the Democratic chair attacked presumptive Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney for holding money in Swiss bank accounts in the past.

Frank Keating, the president and CEO of the American Bankers Association and former two-term governor of Oklahoma, writes this letter to the editor in response to James Pethokoukis's recent WEEKLY STANDARD article "Too Big for Comfort."

The tide sweeping from Greece across Europe and into the United States is washing away support for austerity, in some cases reinforcing opposition to it, largely from the left. President Obama is delighted at this support for his refusal to cut spending in the face of mounting deficits, and the Republicans are feeling beleaguered at what they see as the disinterment of the body of works of John Maynard Keynes.

According to just released disclosure forms, President Barack Obama has between $500,000-1,000,000 in assets in a JP Morgan Chase account. The full title of the account, as it's written on the disclosures, is "JPMorgan Chase Private Client Asset Mgmt Checking Account." It is a jointly held account, presumably with First Lady Michelle Obama.

Most administrations are a bit reluctant to pass regulations that anger prominent members of their own party, but President Obama apparently has no qualms doing so. Last week the administration announced the final version of a regulation that will require depository institutions to report interest paid to nonresident aliens despite protestations from the entire Florida delegation (including DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz) and a wide array of Democrats and Republicans across the country. The harmful consequences to our economy promise to be significant.

Tom Maguire: "Their gist seems to be that the 'less government' crowd is a bunch of hypocrites, but there is a glaring problem with their numbers."

The Hill: "Santorum suggests Romney rigged CPAC straw poll victory"

There are a number of pricey regulations that have received attention of late: net neutrality, new ozone standards, countless regulations stemming from the passage of the Dodd-Frank bill. These rules typically garner a mention in the Wall Street Journal, a formal Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) review, and, in some cases, a lengthy Regulatory Impact Analysis.

President Obama's first chief of staff Rahm Emanuel once sat on the board of troubled federal mortgage giant Freddie Mac. Bill Daley, the president's chief of staff whose departure was announced today, was previously a top executive at financial firm J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. So of course there should be little surprise that Obama's latest chief of staff, announced today by the president himself, also has deep ties to the financial industry himself.

Capital New York: "Bloomberg: ‘Plain and simple,’ Congress caused the mortgage crisis, not the banks"

Joel Gehrke: "3,000 more six-figure pensions in Calif."