February 18, 2010

GOP Goes Solo on Financial Reform

Flickr/Gregory.Skibinski

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Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), whose financial-reform negotiations with Senate banking committee chair Chris Dodd (D-CT) broke down recently, is crafting a Republican version of financial reform with other GOP senators on the banking committee, Bloomberg reported today. The ranking member on the banking committee, Shelby had previously led financial-reform talks with Dodd, but those talks ended with an “impasse” between the two lawmakers. (Dodd has proceded with the talks with Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) since the schism.) Some attributed the breakdown to Shelby’s opposition to a standalone Consumer Financial Protection Agency that would oversee financial products, like subprime mortgages, and would consolidate consumer protection in a single independent agency.

Shelby’s new, GOP-only reform efforts, Bloomberg reported, would create a consumer protection division within an existing bank regulator, not a standalone agency. Shelby aides also told Bloomberg that the senator’s version of financial reform would protect taxpayers from the cost of unwinding too-big-to-fail financial institutions. Also getting a look in Shelby’s financial reform would be a consolidated bank regulator, an idea that’s gaining steam in Dodd’s financial-reform plans as well. Aides to Shelby said a lot of the details have yet to be ironed out, but that talks had been ongoing for a couple of months now.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

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