Photo: Kathy Bockus, The St. Stephen Courier.

By the time of the latter in 2000,  itself a sequel to the one we’d secured in San Francisco a year after we met,  we’d already enacted the “in sickness and in health” part of the vows, at each other’s side during hospitalizations, and were about to dance together at my brother’s wedding. In 2004, during what I called “gay marriage fever season,” we jumped at the chance to try for a marriage license in Nyack, N.Y., joining one of a near-dozen lawsuits charging that the ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional. But that suit, like the others,  failed before the state’s highest court in 2006, the justices practically begging the Legislature to clarify the law.

But that didn’t appear imminent when we moved to Pennsylvania two years later; we finally tied the knot last year in a small Canadian town just over the Maine border. (We even made the papers — not so much for being a same-sex-marriage but for being the first to marry at New Brunswick’s Chocolate Museum.) Our parents made the trip and our brothers were the official witnesses, something that I’d never have dreamed possible when we met in the 1990s.

Still, as the momentum gathered this year in New York State, we couldn’t help feeling that it was our journey, too. On the day same-sex marriage was voted in, I choked up watching Sen. Tom Duane, whom I’d covered often as a reporter,  speaking about his partner, Lewis Webre, and the bill he’d championed for nearly a decade. And Sunday I loved learning about it on Twitter, as @CityHallNews told me that  ”NY County judges prepping to marry ssm couples, affixing brooches to their robes. A reported shortage of inkpads to stamp certificates.” Or from @steven_thrasher: NY #SSM - that “judges don’t say ‘I now pronounce you wife & wife,’ but ‘I now pronounce you married.’ Has a dignity to it.” Absolutely. Over all, 659  couples wed on the historic day.

Rache and I will likely renew our vows in New York, maybe even on our first wedding anniversary. In the meantime, here are some moments many of us will think of as our wedding album:

A week after signing the marriage bill, Gov. Andrew Cuomo was hailed at the city’s Pride parade, along with Sen. Tom Duane and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who proposed to her girl the next day.

12:01, July 24, 2011: Cheryle Rudd and Kitty Lambert start off the day’s festivities with Niagara Falls in the background.

4  p.m.: Rod and Ricky, the pair of Wall Street bankers  in love from the musical Avenue Q, had a wedding on a Broadway stage along with a handful of the industry’s human gay couples.

The cover of The New Yorker Magazine, July 25, 2011.

Photo: David Shankbone Of course, we knew such happiness would be challenged by some people, like this member of the Westboro Baptist Church, which joined for one day with other marriage opponents to stream their rally. (Maybe I won’t put that one in the album, though it’s a useful reminder of why the struggle has taken this long.)

Photo: Jen Doll 5:40 p.m.: Mayor Michael Bloomberg officiates at the wedding of aides John Feinblatt and Jonathan Mintz, to the delight of their ‘tween daughters (and flower girls.)

Please send any photos you  have to supplement these, especially if you were there. We’ll be happy to add them to our gallery. And I’m still so proud of the city where I was born, for helping lead the country into the 21st century.

I know it’s been too long since I actually blogged here – even though my book is finally done! But this crosspost is kind of time-specific.

Today, politicians both active and aspiring are pressing the flesh at Fourth of July gatherings. Many, perhaps especially on the Tea Party end of things, have been claiming the mantle of that week in July pretty hard for the past few years. And now, just in time, Harvard University tells us that Fourth of July parades inherently turn kids into Republicans, claiming that “there is a political congruence between the patriotism promoted on the  Fourth of July and the values associated with the Republican Party. Fourth of July celebrations in Republican-dominated counties may thus be more politically biased events that socialize children into Republicans.”

But like Jonathan Turley, who teaches at Harvard, I refuse to concede the Fourth of July, or the idea of America, to any one political faction. Today belongs to me, too.

It belongs to women too, from Abigail Adams to Sally Hemings, mother of some of Thomas Jefferson’s children; from Maj. Alice Davey Sheldon to Dolores Huerta (left), co-founder of the United Farm Workers.

The best of those Fourth of July parades are the small-town ones, like the one I saw 20 years ago in Saugerties, N.Y., where moms cheered the local Junior ROTC contingent and everyone sang the town song, “Oh Saugerties,” before the Star-Spangled Banner. Or they’re the raucous multicultural festivals we see in Los Angeles, New York, Seattle and Philadelphia, where tonight I’ll stand and watch fireworks not far from where the Declaration of Independence was brewed.

I don’t claim to know whether that document was a simple declaration of war, with all that “general welfare” stuff thrown in for fun, as pundits have claimed. But I do know that those words have been cited by men and women around the world, from hundreds of countries and a thousand political perspectives. And today is about celebrating the sense of infinite possibility that America at its  best can represent. And yes, we could all list what America at its worst might mean. But that’s not what today is about.

I’ve watched fireworks on the Fourth when I was 13 and called myself a “democratic socialist”; when I was 16 and a fan of Atlas Shrugged, like Ron Paul; when I was 35 in San Francisco and newly realizing I was a lesbian. None of those times came with a partisan agenda, though my determination to preserve that sense of possibility has only increased. So has the range of fighters for freedom worth applauding. Yesterday, it included the kids, from 3 to 19 years old, dancing at a block party nearby. They deserve the Fourth, too.

Thank you, crazy 18th-century men who gave us this day. Before I go out tonight, I’ll make sure to watch a little of that movie.

Doris Dukes was a cashier at WalMart when she realized that “The Wal-Mart Way” did not include clear, consistent rules for who gets promotions in the stores. She called a lawyer — and became, more than ten years ago, the lead plaintiff in Wal-Mart v. Dukes, a class action sex-discrimination lawsuit against one of the world’s largest corporations. As the New York Times pointed out in December, “The suit now speaks for more women than the combined total of active-duty personnel in the U.S. Army, Air Force, Marines, Navy and Coast Guard.”

Tomorrow, March 29, the Court will hear oral arguments in the case. In many ways, the stakes could hardly be higher.

WalMart is asking the Court to strike down two major decisions by the Court of Appeals, last year, in California. The Ninth Circuit found that Dukes, the 62 other named plaintiffs, and reams of statistical and anecdotal data had demonstrated that Wal-Mart’s well-known diversity policies had not overcome a corporate culture and associated practices that have systematically made it harder for women and people of color to advance in the company.

Ledbetter redux?

Among those practices are company-wide rules against discussing compensation, which can lead to an employee never even knowing that her pay is significantly lower than her white/male peers. A similar rule was at the heart of the infamous 2007 Supreme Court decision Lilly Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. (550 U.S. 618), which in effect told Lilly Ledbetter that she had no redress when she learned too late that she and other women had been discriminated against. As WVFC’s Faith Childs observed in early 2009, after the decision “lower courts around the country have been busy deepening its effect, turning away suits charging discrimination based on sex, race and disability.” While that decision was reversed in part by the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, signed in 2009 by President Obama, that bill didn’t really fix the problem. More systemic redress for women was contained in the still-stalled Paycheck Fairness Act, which has been blocked in the Senate partly due to provisions that would make it easier for women to obtain legal damages from corporations. Barring such legislative relief, Wal-Mart v. Dukes may set the tone for the next few decades.

The attorneys who joined Doris Dukes’ case to hundreds of others spent ten years assembling their case. They found women at multiple levels of the hierarchy in hundreds of Wal-Mart stores who talked of being told women should stay home with their kids, that men “needed” management jobs more, and that if women were paid less it was simply that they weren’t aggressive in asking for raises. Counsel also secured salary and promotion data that demonstrated that whatever one thinks of this or that practice, its result is unmistakable:

Too big to sue?

This week, the Court will not be asked to evaluate the specific antidiscrimination claims of Dukes and her co-plaintiffs, but whether the case itself is legitimate. Wal-Mart’s briefs state that the class’s incredible diversity means that it’s not a true class, since all they share is gender; they also claim that the case violates specifics of the laws governing class action, which have been significantly narrowed since landmark cases such as Brown v. Board of Education. And the sheer size of the class, they maintain, makes crafting any remedy near-impossible and damages that would threaten to bankrupt the defendants. The company maintains that the large number of its stores, managers, and employees means that pay and promotion decisions “turn[ed] on decisions made by individual store managers,” without the commonality among class members required for class certification. Hundreds of companies and organizations filed briefs in support of Wal-Mart’s challenge, including Intel, Costco, the Equal Employment Advisory Council, Pacific Legal Foundation, Altria Group, Inc., Bank of America Corporation, Cigna Corporation, Del Monte Foods Company, Dole Food Company, Inc., Dollar General Corporation, Dupont Company, Fedex Corporation, General Electric Company, Hewlett-Packard Company, Kimberly-Clark Corporation, McKesson Corporation, Microsoft Corporation, NYSE Euronext, Pepsico, Inc., Tyson Foods, Inc., United Health Group Incorporated, United Parcel Service, Inc., Walgreen Co.and Washington Legal Foundation.

Dukes and her co-plaintiffs counter that the class’ diversity is its strength, and that they can show that “sex discrimination at Wal-Mart was the inevitable byproduct of a strong and centralized corporate system that originated in the company’s Home Office in Bentonville, Arkansas, and permeated each of the company’s stores in the United States.” In support of Dukes for the Court were the U.S. Women’s Chamber of Commerce, the National Partnership for Women & Families, National Women’s Law Center, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, AARP, Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, Inc., Latino Justice PRLDEF, Asian American Justice Center, Asian Law Caucus, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and Public Citizen, among others.

If the Court agrees with Wal-Mart that there’s no legitimate class action, Dukes supporters say, this will make it much harder to take on employment discrimination. Marcia Greenberger of the National Women’s Law Center (above left) told an American Constitution Society briefing on the case last week that the impact would not be limited to women: “Older workers, workers with disabilities, workers of color — all would find it harder to make their employers accountable,” she said.

And justice for all?

No one’s placing bets yet on the Court’s decision in June. Tomorrow’s oral arguments promise to be fascinating, given that most of the current court decided Ledbetter in 2007 and ruled for corporations’ rights in Citizens United in 2010 — including Antonin Scalia, whose recent comments declaring that women aren’t included in the Civil Rights Act have caused some to ask Scalia to recuse himself from Dukes.

However, the New York Times‘ Linda Greenhouse, looking at the current Court term, found some perhaps surprising stats: “Employees suing companies for civil rights violations have won all three cases decided so far… By wide margins, the court has rejected arguments put forward by corporate defendants in several cases. It refused to permit corporations to claim a personal-privacy exemption from disclosure of law-enforcement records under the Freedom of Information Act. It permitted a liability suit to proceed against an automobile manufacturer for not installing the safest kind of back-seat passenger restraint. And in a unanimous opinion on Tuesday, the court refused to throw out a lawsuit by investors alleging that a drug manufacturer’s failure to disclose reports that some patients using its cold remedy had lost their sense of smell amounted to securities fraud.” And no one is overlooking the fact that this is the very first such case to be decided by a Court that is, for the first time, one-third female — including, noted the Times‘ Adam Liptak, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who voted to certify an even larger class action in an antitrust case involving eight million merchants, including Wal-Mart, when she was a judge on the United States Court of Appeals.

We’ll have a full popcorn bowl handy while we read the live blogs of the arguments. By all means, let’s comment on them together below — and then place our bets on the outcome in June.

(Originally posted at Women’s Voices for Change.)

Like everyone else, I’ve been mesmerized this whole month by events in Cairo : by the stirring scenes from Egypt, careening from the January 25 Facebook-organized protests, with hundreds of thousands converging in Cairo, Alexandria and elsewhere to demand that their leader relinquish power after 30 years; to the harsh, government-inspired “Days of Rage” of February 2; to Friday’s “Day of Departure,”with redoubled protests and open negotiations for the future.

It’s 21 years since my only visit (sob!) to that part of the world. My Cairo memories are mostly blurred (nowhere near as vivid as those of the masseuse who befriended me at Sharm-el-Shaikh, or what I still call “the Pyramids of New Jersey”). I do remember its insane traffic and brutal smog, and like everyone else felt the reports of the smog clearing this week (due to cars being replaced by bodies) a harbinger of something good.

Of course, I went off to find the women in this story, to post them at my other shop.

The names most often associated with these world-changing events were, of course, those of prominent Egyptian men, such as President Hosni Mubarak, nuclear scientist and popular opposition figure Mohammed el-Baradei, Army strongman and vice president Omar Suleiman and Mohamed Beltagui of the Muslim Brotherhood. On today’s chat shows, you’ll likely see those names tossed around as Middle East experts try to predict the future.

But what we’ll most remember is the women’s leadership that has evolved right alongside these protests —including human rights activist Nawal al-Saadawi, who speaks above about her return to Egypt years after being imprisoned and exiled by successive Egyptian regimes. Hundreds of images like these adorn the Women Of Egypt Facebook page. “The country’s sisterhood,” notes the Los Angeles Times, “has sparked a movement within a movement.”

Much more here,, including tons of video and Mona Eltahawy laughing in Bill Maher’s face.

Here is the very first story I ever pitched to WHYY’s Alan Tu, back in September, Given my background in sussing out tenant stories in Manhattan, I knew quickly that there had to be a story in our slice of the national foreclosure crisis. It’s a story about predatory lending, about neighborhoods, and about a pioneering legislator who figured out 30 years ago what to do about all this.

The story’s also a phoenix: it sat in the pending pile, right behind breaking news, until the city suspended all foreclosures AND I happened upon the perfect interview subject. I hope it absorbs and amuses some folks.

Now to my follow-up story, and to cutting my book manuscript by two-thirds.

When you hear the phrase “mama grizzly” thrown around as a Republican buzzword, it’s useful to think of heroic women who live up to that phrase. I had the privilege of meeting one last week, at the University of Pennsylvania.

“I was just a mom, who cared about her boys,” said the lovely 5’4″ woman to the 50 people crowding in to hear her, in a campus bookstore at the University of Pennsylvania.  “I was not a public person.”

Yet today, Judy Shepard’s life is entirely public, so much so that she said good-naturedly of her life: “I spend a lot of time on airplanes.” And on, June 27  she was one of three grand marshals in one of New York City’s largest parades: the 41st annual NYC Pride march, urging full equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans.

Not that Shepard herself is among them. But ever since her son, Matthew Shepard,  died nearly 12 years ago at the hands of two men who’d been looking for  a gay man to assault, Shepard and her family have worked every day to end such hate crimes.

They set up The Matthew Shepherd Foundation to “replace hate with understanding, compassion, and acceptance through educational, outreach, and advocacy programs and by continuing to tell Matthew’s story.” They fought for passage of the Hate Crimes Prevention Act, and when it was signed into law last fall Matthew’s name was on it. Now her husband,  oil executive Dennis Shepherd, works with the FBI to educate state and local authorities about what they need to do to comply with the new law.

But it wasn’t until last year that Judy Shepard’s own story began to be told, with the publication of The Meaning of Matthew:  My Son’s Murder in Laramie, and a World Transformed. Last week, her appearance at the University of Pennsylvania bookstore in Philadelphia, timed to promote the book’s release in paperback, was also a gathering of local LGBT activists during Pride Month. But like the book itself, the resulting conversation was evenly divided between the cause and the story of Judy Shepard, who was 46 the day she received that fateful phone call telling her that “something had happened” to her son.

Throughout, Shepard’s manner was fearless, welcoming, and deeply polite: as she answered every question, she then thanked the questioner for asking. When  asked about who she was before her son was murdered, she laughed and briefly described her youth, in a town of fewer than 2,000 people and a high school class that numbered only 27.  “I never thought I’d be doing anything when I grew up but getting married and having a family,” she said. She met her husband at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, and became a teacher in local schools. But soon, with the birth of Matt and his brother Logan, “I was a mom,” she said. “I’d been a schoolteacher, but mostly I wanted to take care of my family and keep them safe.”

Sometimes that care included moving everyone to Saudi Arabia when her husband’s job beckoned; sometimes it meant finding schools for her sons nowhere near her, as with Matthew in Switzerland or Logan in Minnesota.  Her younger son was still in high school, in Minnesota, when Matthew was attacked; one of the most moving scenes in Shepard’s book (written in collaboration with journalist Jon Bennett) describes the 17-year-old  saying his final goodbyes to his brother.

Shepard didn’t spend much time talking about October 9, 1998, when her son was beaten into a coma and left for dead in a Wyoming field.  Recounting that day is perhaps best left to Moises Kaufman’s The Laramie Project, the multi-stage theater piece that premiered in 2000 and includes interviews with the principals (including the attackers)  with an epilogue last fall that checks in with them ten years later. “That project did not come from us,” Shepard said in response to a question. “They never talked to us. And I haven’t ever seen it. I’ve seen the epilogue — maybe someday I’ll be able to watch the other.”

The play, she emphasized, was not about her son but about the community where it happened – a choice she questions. “My husband and I both went to college in Laramie,” she said. “And I can tell you that those two young men were not part of Laramie.” There’s prejudice there she said, but Laramie is no more afflicted with hate than anywhere else. “What happened to Matt could have happened anywhere. And does,” she added.

Making Laramie a symbol of hate, she added, is as false as some cultural ideas about Matthew Shepard. “I wrote this book,” she said, “because I knew Matt — my Matt. Who was a kid. He was 21 years old, and funny, and smart; he did some incredibly stupid things, like many young people and maybe especially young guys figuring out their sexuality. He had some problems, and was trying to make his way through them. It took me a while to realize that there was this other guy, someone that people only knew as a gay man who was killed for being gay. “

That was the Matthew Shepard whose picture was carried by thousands of people in vigils before he died and protest marches after, including those at the trials of his assailants, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, and at the October 2009 signing of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act. Writing the book and examining all the stages of her life with Matt made Shepard realize how much ‘her’ Matt was part of the iconic Matthew Shepard. “I wanted to integrate the two — to bring together those two Matthews, so that he would be a real, flawed person to those who have  mourned him.”

Those mourners included Bob Schoenberg, who has directed Penn’s LGBT center for 27 years and who’d introduced Shepard to the audience that day. Schoenberg  described the way the campus had responded to the attack with vigils, memorials, and calls for action. “And on the 10th anniversary of the attack, 400 LGBT people and allies came together to talk about his legacy.” That legacy, said Shepard, is the imperative to build even more spaces where LGBT youth feel safe — which requires, she added, full equality.  “The enemy is fear,” she said, especially internalized fear that expresses itself in bullying, exclusion, and failure to protect. Or far worse, as in the 2008 case of middle-schooler Lawrence King, who was shot and killed by a classmate soon after coming out as gay.

Asked what to do to make schools safer for LGBT kids, Shepard connected it to the Employment Non-Discrimination Act still lingering in Congress.  “If teachers are afraid of being identified as gay — whether they are or not! — then kids won’t be safe. They won’t take the actions they need to take. That’s why we need ENDA now. I hope you all call your Congresspeople tomorrow and tell them, You need to vote for ENDA.”

In the meantime, Shepard’s foundation works hard to fill in some of the gaps for youth, including a separate Matthew’s Place website with extensive resources. That’s where Shepard directed a young student who asked her, “I’m trying to build a gay-straight alliance, but so many kids are afraid that they’ll be tagged as gay.  What should I do?”

“If they’re afraid of being called gay, they might have a bigger problem,” Shepard said with a wry smile.

Shepard has had to deploy that half-smile a lot during her journey. You see it in the clip above, in her response to Rep. Virginia Foxx, who called her son’s murder a ‘hoax’ on the House floor. Or when she was asked on Tuesday whether she’s ever talked to the men who killed Matthew. “They haven’t reached out,” she said. “And if you are asking about forgiveness…” The crowd chuckled at her veiled fury. “Not for the men who beat my son until — the police who found him thought he was a child, he was bent so small.” In any event, she added, “I hear Aaron McKinney thinks of himself as quite the folk hero.”

That pained smile remained when she was asked about the notorious Fred Phelps, the former civil rights attorney whose Westboro Baptist Church protested her son’s funeral and now does the same at the funerals of soldiers, claiming their deaths as retribution for tolerance of gays. “We love Fred,” she said sadly. “We’ve raised a lot of money thanks to Fred. But I feel sorry for his family. And I think if the media stopped paying attention to him, it would be better.”

In any event, Shepard and her husband are far too busy to be distracted by those who hate them. Asked “Is your life very different now? Do you feel your life is good?” she stopped for a moment before evaluating the life that pulls her to Washington one day and countless local communities the next.

“Yes, it’s good,” Shepard said. “It’s different. It’s not what I expected in my life. But it’s good.”

But I was calling instead to tell her that the New York Times had run perhaps the first published mention of our reality back then:

The school, which then occupied two floors of an office building at 46th Street and Lexington Avenue, was and remains one of New York’s elite public high schools. It drew girls from across the city and an array of backgrounds — all admitted on the strength of their performance on an entrance exam, rather than money or family connections.

“We were really exposed to tremendous diversity there — whether it was a Jewish girl from the Upper West Side or a cop’s kid from the Bronx or the daughter of a C.E.O. from the Upper East Side or kids whose parents worked in sweatshops in Chinatown,” said Ellen M. Purtell, a high school classmate of Ms. Kagan’s. “It was never about what you were wearing. It was: Did you bring your best game academically with you today and could you contribute to the discussion?”

I wish I knew the exact day in September that I first got into the elevator of that office building — to me, my exact crossover from the east Bronx into a bigger world. And its all-girl status was part of its magic, one that has been lost for awhile. (I was in the first class that admitted boys, but they were too a test case, and too few to change that magic.)

There are literally millions  like me and my friend, women who see ourselves as Kagan’s constituency. I think we should have our own march on Washington.

In the meantime, I think I’ll throw out a query across Philly. Anyone want to meet for a beer to celebrate Kagan day, or watch her rock the Judiciary Committee hearings?

As our own Diane Vacca observed last fall, the late-2008 crash alerted all of us to the fact that the dissolution of the post-Great Depression controls on banking had some very serious downsides. Among them, perhaps, was the discrediting of the very ratings agencies investors have traditionally depended on (such as Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s), something DeutscheBank’s Karen Weaver foreshadowed in an interview with us six months before the Big Bust. So who can we depend on to keep our money safe, short of putting it all in gold bars under the bed?

To one extent or another, all the legislators working on the Wall Street reform bill are trying to answer that question.

But what’s in the bill that was filed, and what has been voted on so far? Like the problem it’s trying to address, it’s long and complex. Below is a sampling of how the bill tries to address some of the more obvious fault lines–the systemic problems identified by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission–drawn from the committee’s own summaries.

Stopping the casino: “Wall Street should have a socially important purpose, and not resemble a casino, where people are more concerned with valuing an option than valuing a business,” investment guru Warren Buffett said recently. The Senate bill incorporatesthe ‘Volcker Rule,’ suggested by former Fed chairman Paul Volcker, which requires regulators to implement regulations for banks, their affiliates and holding companies, to prohibit proprietary trading, investment in and sponsorship of hedge funds and private equity funds, and to limit relationships with hedge funds and private equity funds. Nonbank financial institutions supervised by the Fed will also have restrictions on proprietary trading and hedge fund and private equity investments.

Reining in derivatives: Perhaps the knottiest of the issues the Senate is wrestling with is that of all the new financial instruments, fabricated from mathematical sleight-of-hand and other people’s money.

According to a report from the Congressional Research Service, for a while these instruments seemed like the best game in town: “Since 2000, growth in derivatives markets has been explosive (although the financial crisis has caused some retrenchment since 2008). Between 2000 and the end of 2008, the volume of derivatives contracts traded on exchanges, such as futures exchanges, and the notional value of total contracts traded in the over-the-counter (OTC) market3 grew by 475 and 522 percent respectively. By contrast, during nearly unprecedented credit and housing booms, the respective value of corporate bonds and home mortgages outstanding grew by 95 and 115 percent over the same period.” Then came the crash; a few weeks ago we posted footage of former regulator Brooksley Born exposing the damage. Arkansas senator Blanche Lincoln (right) has given the issue particular heat, and authored the derivatives section of this bill.

Of course, many sensible investors already spurned derivatives when they had the choice. Take, for example, Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway holding company: hedge fund manager Alan Schram, reporting on a shareholders meeting of the company, noted that Berkshire holds “250 derivative contracts, down from some 23,000 contracts ten years ago, with a notional value of 1 percent of that of some other large institutions.” But many of America’s pension funds and 401(k)s were not quite so farsighted.

Derivatives “have some utility but have to be conducted safely, under responsible rules,” Buffett told shareholders. So what sort of “responsible rules” does the Senate bill currently propose? For starters, it would “require issuers to disclose more information about the underlying assets and to analyze the quality of the underlying assets” of derivatives and, perhaps more importantly, “require that companies that sell products like mortgage-backed securities to retain at least five percent of the credit risk, “unless the underlying loans meet standards that reduce riskiness.” It would also change the rules and the composition of the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board, to stop outside “investment managers” from placing bets with the taxpayer funds and pension contributions.

More systemically, it brings “an estimated 90 percent of the market for derivatives, which are essentially bets on the future price of something, onto a regulated trading exchange—similar to a stock exchange, where price and volume data are publicly available to potential investors,” Brooksley Born’s former aide Michael Greenburger told ProPublica’s Marian Wang. “It leaves certain exceptions for foreign exchange deals and commercial use (such as an airline company’s use of derivatives to hedge against prices of fuel skyrocketing).” Let’s watch as senators parry over those exceptions, and see whether what they agree on is enough.

Leverage requirements. The word “leverage” may make you think of a grizzled Timothy Hutton on a Fox TV show. But for banks and shadow bankers, it means how much in the way of assets has to stand behind your investment, whether in cash, real estate, or farm implements. “If you’re a bank, the upside of leverage is that it gives you a lot of money that you can use, well, to make more money,” writes Washington Post wonk Ezra Klein. “It’s the difference between investing $1 in the stock market and $40. The downside is that it makes your firm fragile.”

If your leverage is at 2:1 — that is to say, you’ve borrowed one dollar to add to the dollar you already had — you could lose a full dollar and still be able to pay your creditor back. If you’re at 10:1, anything beyond a 10 percent decline in your assets means that if your creditors want repayment, you can’t pay them back (as you’ve lost more than your original dollar). At 20:1, a 5 percent decline will put you underwater. At 40:1, a mere 2.5 percent decline can finish you off. The more leverage you have, the less bad luck you can survive.

Therefore, the Senate bill would create a Financial Oversight Regulatory Commission, which would “impos[e] tough new capital and leverage requirements that make it undesirable to get too big” and therefore “too big to fail.” C-SPAN addicts, here are your marching orders: keep track of how this aspect of the bill changes in upcoming weeks.

Preventing future runs on the “shadow banking” system: What happened in September 2008, when all credit froze, did not include hordes of depositors rushing to pull their money out of Chase or Bank of America branches. Those institutions are covered, and regulated, by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). What did happen was an immediate blowout in the complex, interwoven, and immensely profitable network of financial institutions operating outside federal supervision, which magnified the collapse of one sector (subprime mortgages) until it nearly broke the economy.

Chief among these, perhaps, are hedge funds and reinsurance companies (think AIG). The Dodd bill establishes an Office of National Insurance to better monitor the latter, and would require a hedge fund with significant assets to register with the SEC like any other broker. Hedge funds, according to the bill summary, would have to “provide information about their trades and portfolios necessary to assess systemic risk. This data will be shared with the systemic risk regulator and the SEC will report to Congress annually on how it uses this data to protect investors and market integrity.

As even the most casual observer of last week’s Senate hearings on Goldman Sachs might have noticed, it’s a long and complicated way back to the stability investors once expected. “It took twenty-five years of misguided economic theorizing and legislation, along with insufficient regulation, to create an outlaw financial sector,” wrote economist John Cassidy for The New Yorker. “Rehabilitating it will be a mighty, multiyear endeavor.”

Coming soon: our report on the controversial bailout-or-no-bailout provisions, the current state of the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, and how the Senate plans to deal with those suddenly rascally ratings agencies.

(Also published at Women’s Voices for Change and  24/7 Wall Street.com.)

]]> http://pelham2pelham.wordpress.com/2010/05/06/a-field-guide-to-wall-street-reform-part-one/feed/ 0 chrislombardi dirksen-senate-office-building View_of_Wall_Street blanche-lincoln http://pelham2pelham.wordpress.com/2010/05/02/ten-reasons-to-love-mount-airy-philadelphia/ http://pelham2pelham.wordpress.com/2010/05/02/ten-reasons-to-love-mount-airy-philadelphia/#comments Sun, 02 May 2010 00:00:15 +0000 chrislombardi http://pelham2pelham.wordpress.com/?p=11 Continue reading →]]> Former New Yorker that I am, I’ve often told friends that where I live now is kind of like Park Slope, in Brooklyn. But as I’ve lived here, I’ve had to adapt that analogy, which applies pretty well to one of our main commercial strips;  other parts remind me more of Berkeley, California, while so many admit to no comparison at all (like the 19th-century stone houses at right).

I’m writing this on one of our first warm days, after a brutal winter; behind me the kids are running around, kids who call my fiancee “Miss Rachel” just as we call our neighbors Mr. X and Miss Y; it’s the local tradition. Scout, my feline muse, is alert, looking out the window and wondering where all these small humans come from all of a sudden. (For so long, there was only snowy, silent streets).

Today we went wandering off to the 40th Annual Mount Airy Day, in Germantown proper. Actually, legally we’re in Germantown too; I suspect the term “Mount Airy” was originally coined by realtors, just like my old NY neighborhood “Hudson Heights.”  (The latter now distinguishes the  blocks northwest of uptown’s Dominican communities, even though the synagogue next door still has WASHINGTON HEIGHTS carved into its sidewalk.) We saw a good number of people we knew and met some we hadn’t; the whole event made me decide it’s time to write here again, and  with a list of ten things that tell me I was  right to move here.

1. It’s the history, stupid. Old City, which I love, has all the colonial grandeur, the City Tavern and the teensy streets. But while liberty was being secured there,  the area’s estates in Germantown were witnessing battles and coming to grips with their then-recent slave-owning past. (Today’s event took place in Cliveden Park, formerly part of the estate of the Chews, then the most prominent enslavers in the city.)  200 years later, in the 1970s, people actively worked to prevent redlining and keep the area diverse. And I’ve just told you most of what I know. The idea of learning much, much more is intoxicating.

2. Actual non-chain bookstores. At today’s event, I ran into Maleka of Big Blue Marble, the bookstore( in the Berkeley part of town) that helped me decide to move here. I’ve been able to get them to host readings for my writer peeps, but I love more what a community center they are. On their Web site, you can see the community room where they host writing classes, children’s reading groups, etc. And having a huge used bookstore, Walk a Crooked Mile, not far away is a huge bonus.

3. Artists everywhere. Speaking of the arts, just yesterday the final local Poetry Slam was held at Infusion, a coffee shop in the Brooklyn part of town. And at the event today was the Mount Airy Art Garage, whose actual space is near Blue Marble.  Its participants are quite serious, many quite good. AND they know that they won’t be famous tomorrow, the collective hallucination of New York creatives. That attitude was part or what I liked about San Francisco, I told an actor I was interviewing recently who’d found her theatrical home in Philly.  “In Philly this is a life calling for these people,” she agreed.  “No one’s getting rich, but everyone’s committed to doing excellent work. And because it’s not Broadway, maybe, the community of artists there are more willing to take risks, to let you take risks.” In this neighborhood meet playwrights, painters, poets with a similar sense of balance.

4. The Mount Airy Lesbian Social Club. I know it sounds like a 19th-century tea society, but it’s actually the only Meetup I know that has actually gotten me involved. For dykes over 35, it features otherwise incredibly diverse, 500-strong membership — including jocks, artistes, doctors/lawyers/ministers/teachers. It reminds me of the group through which I met my girl, ba-cyberdykes, which I nicknamed “Lesbians with Modems.” If I’ve made any new friends at all since I moved to Philly, it’s largely due to MALSC

5. Coffee coffee coffee. What journo working at home gets on without it? If I want to work in a cafe there’s Point of Destination four blocks away,High Point across from Blue Marble and the food co-op, and Infusion in the Brooklyn part of the nabe.  Not a Starbucks on the list, though I still depend on the latter when I’m traveling.

6. A little bit of Brooklyn, but not. In addition to the above-mentioned Infusion, the three blocks of Germantown Ave. north of Mount Pleasant include the Video Library, which includes a screening room and an ice cream shop; TWO good brew-pubs; craft stores, one of which specializes in organic materials; and restaurants galore, including a couple of medium-upscale dinner spots as well as sources of good Chinese and Mexican food.  All within a half-hour walk of where I sit now.

7.  Satyagraha squared. Including today at Mt. Airy Day,  in the past six weeks I have attended two film screenings at Greene St. Friends, one about Bayard Rustin and one Howard Zinn; cheered on a friend who was welcoming Soulforce to Valley Forge; met a Brandywine Peace Center guy who spent years getting arrested along with Phil Berrigan; and hung out with the local chapters of the Women’s International League of Peace and Freedom. All nonsectarian, non-creepy people committed to non-violent action, even though the big Quaker power centers are elsewhere. Like #1, a symmetry with my book and my own past.

8. Public transit quietly plentiful. , Here’s to the R8,with twosom stops within walking distance, and the 23 bus. I wish they both ran more frequently, but that’s for the regional planners to figure out. For now it’s OK, and enables a compromise between my city-self-that-would-prefer-Center-City and my bike-riding, park-loving girl.

9. About those parks: In New York, that gap was partly bridged by Fort Tryon Park, with its carefully sculptured interior you could get lost in. I ran through it three times a week. Wissahickon Park (left) feels even more limitless, like a mysterious weave of leaf and stone. If Philly is a city of parks, as Penn planned, then this is a cloak of nature hiding the fact that it’s in a city at all. I’ve yet to truly feel at home in it, but I feel its calm.

10. The kids.Whenever it is I move from here, I’ll think of the nearby 11-year-old twins who were raising kittens when we met them; the toddlers whose faces twisted in concentration when choosing Halloween candy; and the precocious middle-schoolers I met at Blue Marble, both of whom went to Friends schools and one of whom had pleaded to move back here from Texas. because it was strange and not at all like Mount Airy.

I don’t mean to say I think it’s a perfect place, or even perfect for me. There’s plenty of civic tumult, and on a personal level I still feel kind of isolated at times. I wonder if it will ever feel completely like home. But it certainly still feels like a good choice now. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

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