ArcaMax

Federal bank regulators are proposing to allow Wall Street more freedom to make riskier bets with federally insured bank deposits -- such as the money in your checking and savings accounts.

Watch your wallets.

The new proposal waters down the so-called "Volcker Rule" (named after former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, who proposed it). ...Read more

I keep hearing that if Donald Trump fires special counsel Robert Mueller, we'll face a constitutional crisis.

Or if Mueller subpoenas Trump to testify and Trump defies the subpoena, it's a constitutional crisis.

Or if Mueller comes up with substantial evidence that Trump is guilty of colluding with Russia or of obstructing justice but the ...Read more

Imagine that an impeachment resolution against Donald Trump passes the House. Trump claims it's the work of the "deep state." Sean Hannity of Fox News demands that every honest patriot take to the streets. Right-wing social media call for war. As insurrection spreads, Trump commands the armed forces to side with the "patriots."

Or, it's ...Read more

I spent last week at a conference in South Korea, during which time Donald Trump went from seeking a meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to cancelling it, then suggesting it might be back on.

"What does Trump want?" South Korean officials at the conference kept asking me. Notably, no one asked what the United States wants. They knew it...Read more

Donald Trump's strategy for keeping power is to build up his coalition of America's white working class and the nation's ownership class.

It's a curious coalition, to say the least. But if Democrats don't respond to it, it could protect Trump from impeachment and even re-elect him. It just might create a permanent Republican majority around an ...Read more

Donald Trump promised to rein in drug prices. It was his only sensible campaign promise.

But the plan he announced Friday does little but add another battering ram to his ongoing economic war against America's allies.

He calls it "American patients first" and takes aim at what he calls "foreign freeloading." The plan will pressure foreign ...Read more

The Environmental Protection Agency recently granted to an oil refinery owned by Carl Icahn a so-called "financial hardship" waiver. The exemption allows the refinery to avoid clean air laws, potentially saving Icahn millions of dollars.

Icahn is not exactly a hardship case. According to Bloomberg's Billionaire Index, his net worth is $21.8 ...Read more

Why did working-class voters choose a selfish, thin-skinned, petulant, lying, narcissistic, boastful megalomaniac for president?

With the 2018 midterms around the corner, and prospective Democratic candidates already eyeing the 2020 presidential race, the answer is important because it will influence how Democrats campaign.

One explanation ...Read more

Congressional Republicans would be more willing to stand up to Donald Trump if their major financial backers -- big business and Wall Street -- had more backbone.

Ever since 1971, when then-future Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell urged corporations to mobilize politically, corporate money has flooded Washington -- most of it into Republican ...Read more

"It's nonsense that there's a beautiful free market in the power industry," Energy Secretary Rick Perry said recently as he pushed for a government bailout of coal-fired power plants.

Republicans, who for years have voted against subsidies for solar and wind power, arguing that the "free market" should decide our energy future, are now eager to...Read more

The petulant adolescent in the White House -- who has replaced most of the adults around him with raging sycophants and has demoted his chief of staff, John Kelly, to lapdog -- lacks adequate supervision.

Before, he was merely petty and vindictive. He'd tweet nasty things about people he wanted to humiliate, such as former San Francisco 49ers ...Read more

Last week, Laura Ingraham, Fox News' queen of snark, tweeted that David Hogg -- a 17-year-old who survived the mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, and has been among the eloquent advocates for gun control -- "whines about" being rejected by four universities to which he applied. She linked to an article from the Daily Wire calling him a "gun ...Read more

What's worrying isn't that Donald Trump is now getting advice about public policy from fanatics such as John Bolton and Lawrence Kudlow. Trump has never cared about public policy.

The real worry is that with special counsel Robert Mueller breathing down Trump's neck, and with several special elections suggesting a giant "blue wave" in November,...Read more