Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

What can $5 billion buy in Washington? Quite a lot. Over the 1998-2008 period, the financial sector spent more than $5 billion on U.S. federal campaign contributions and lobbying expenditures. This extraordinary investment paid off fabulously. Congress and executive agencies rolled back long-standing regulatory restraints, refused to impose new regulations on rapidly evolving and mushrooming…

Financial deregulatory mania over the last three decades led directly to the current financial meltdown. Were the deregulators acting out of principle? Perhaps. But it couldn’t have hurt that the financial sector invested a staggering $5.1 billion in political influence purchasing in the United States over the last decade. The money flows are laid out…

What a year for corporate criminality and malfeasance! As we compiled the Multinational Monitor list of the 10 Worst Corporations of 2008, it would have been easy to restrict the awardees to Wall Street firms. But the rest of the corporate sector was not on good behavior during 2008 either, and we didn’t want them…