Christopher Hayes: All Related Content

Until last week, I'd never heard of "IBGYBG." But during the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations' eye-opening hearings into ratings agency malfeasance, former Moody's senior credit officer Richard Michalek introduced me to it while testifying about the perverse incentives that dominated the industry. On the investment bank side, he said, bankers were looking to score the one-time fee from whatever securitization deal they were asking the agency to rate, and move on to the next deal.

With healthcare reform passed, the next big legislative battle will be over financial regulation reform. Unlike the Affordable Care Act, which the nation followed from opening to closing credits, financial reform has been running in a largely empty theater. Many reporters and citizens find themselves walking into the show two-thirds of the way through, bewildered by its complexity. But the movie's not over yet, and the ending is undetermined. So it's important for progressives to understand the essential elements of financial reform.

Writing in Time, Christopher Hayes puts it succinctly: "Nearly every pillar institution in American society -- whether it's General Motors, Congress, ...

On the eve of the State of the Union address, word leaked that President Obama was going to call for a multiyear freeze on "nonsecurity discretionary spending," in an apparent attempt to mollify independent voters anxious about the deficit. The reaction in the progressive blogosphere was fast and furious. "Barack Herbert Hoover Obama?" asked Brad DeLong on his blog (Grasping Reality With Opposable Thumbs), while Paul Krugman wrote a blog post titled "Obama Liquidates Himself" and others blasted the president as "lame," an "idiot," a leader with a "self-inflicted lobotomy."