Steve Pomerance

Since the first time I wrote on the financial crisis, I have read almost everything relevant I could find. What really got me going was a call I placed to the Treasury Department in the fall of 2008 during the midst of the crisis to get some very basic mortgage data for a column I was working on. The woman from their Office of Public Information first told me that the information was private, and when I laughed out loud at that ridiculous assertion, she told me that they didn`t have it and I would have to call the Mortgage Bankers Association. Apparently the Treasury was its subsidiary. As former Fed chair Alan Greenspan admitted, he operated as if Wall Street was self-regulating. Ben Bernanke is another case in point. In my opinion, his performance demonstrates how badly things work when financial officials think that little regulation is needed, and that the welfare of banks is more important than the welfare of the citizens. During the run-up to the disaster, both while acting...

The Boulder City Council will hold their goal-setting session next weekend. But any progress they might make could be derailed by some ideas that are circulating. Reports are that as many as five council members would like to remove the earmarking from the Open Space tax, meaning that instead of the funds being dedicated to Open Space, they could be used for anything. This would effectively gut the Open Space program. Fortunately, it also would require a charter amendment and thus a vote in November. I expect a bitter campaign battle. I rate this “ugly” — it should never be brought up. Apparently, some council members would like the voters to re-consider direct election of the mayor and district elections of council members, even though this scheme was defeated 2 to 1 in the 2003 election. A directly elected mayor doesn`t work very well with an appointed city manager; either there is a power struggle, or they ignore the rest of the council. Mayoral elections will devolve into who...