June 02, 2016

The Department of Justice on Thursday announced indictments against two former traders for their role in manipulating a key interest rate that impacts more than $300 trillion in global financial contracts. Matthew Connolly and Gavin Campbell Black are facing ten conspiracy and wire fraud charges for working to manipulate LIBOR—the London Interbank Offered Rate—in order to increase profits for their employer, Deutsche Bank AG. Connolly was a director at the bank’s Pool Trading Desk in New York. Black served as a director for the bank in…

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Climate change will eventually force the US government to spend billions more annually due to hurricane damage alone, according to a Congressional Budget Office report published Thursday. The influential legislative forecaster said the federal government currently spends $18 billion every year on hurricane recovery, but that amount, adjusted for inflation, will grow to $24 billion by 2075. Overall, the study predicted that hurricane damage will by 2075 account for $39 billion in all spending, public and private. The CBO said the US currently spends $28 billion on…

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Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Richard Cordray touted existing alternatives to payday lending on Thursday, as the agency released long-anticipated rules to curtail abusive loansharking. Cordray described the so-called “small-dollar” credit market as fundamentally broken, and said he hoped the proposed regulations would push the financial industry toward less predatory practices. “We are not intending to disrupt existing lending by community banks and credit unions that have found efficient and effective ways to make small-dollar loans to consumers that do not lead to debt traps…

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