By Rachel Goldfarb, originally published on Next New Deal
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How the Banks Bamboozled Chicago (Chicago Sun Times)
Roosevelt Institute Fellow Saqib Bhatti explains how banks broke their contracts with the city of Chicago, and how Mayor Emanuel should respond to get that money back.
An investigation by the Chicago Tribune details many ways that banks misled Chicago Public Schools about the risks involved with these deals and finds that the complex financing schemes involving auction rate securities and swaps likely could cost CPS at least $100 million more than plain vanilla bonds.
When asked at a press conference last week why he wasn’t trying to recover any of this money, Mayor Rahm Emanuel responded, “There’s a thing called a contract.”
Yes, there is a thing called a contract, and the banks broke it when they unlawfully steered CPS into these deals without making adequate disclosures about risk. For example, even though Bank of America officials knew that the auction rate securities market was headed for a “meltdown,” they still pushed CPS into the deals anyway without disclosing their concerns.
Today, Bhatti releases a new report, "Dirty Deals: How Wall Street’s Predatory Deals Hurt Taxpayers and What We Can Do About It," which examines this issue on a broader scale.
Follow below the fold for more.
Good Data Make Better Cities (Boston Globe)
Roosevelt Institute Fellow Susan Crawford and Stephen Goldsmith argue in favor of a revamping of data-sharing laws within government, so they protect without limiting collaboration.
Long-Term Unemployment a Sign of Slack, NY Fed Economists Say (WSJ)
The New York Federal Reserve is calling on policymakers to account for the long-term unemployed in their assessment of the economy, writes Pedro da Costa.
That Silence You Hear Is the Sound of Healthcare.gov Working Just Fine (TNR)
Jonathan Cohn says the disparate headlines about how Obamacare is working are all correct: in general, premiums are increasing slowly, but what that means for individual plans will vary.
Number of Homeless Children in America Surges to All-Time High: Report (HuffPo)
A new report calculates that nearly 2.5 million children were homeless at some point in 2013. Lack of affordable housing plays a major role, report David Crary and Lisa Leff.
How Badly Do Republicans Want Tax Reform? (Maybe Not That Badly) (TAP)
Paul Waldman says that if Republicans – or their campaign funders – really wanted tax reform, they'd start writing a proposal regardless of the president's actions on other issues.
And Now the Richest .01 Percent (Robert Reich)
The richest .01 percent of the U.S. now hold a higher percentage of the country's wealth than in 1929, and Robert Reich says they've used it to buy off American democracy.