SEC

A review of public comments show the public has a deep-seated desire to see more disclosure when it comes to corporate and government accountability data.

Since 2011, more than 640,000 Americans have written to the Securities and Exchange Commission, which regulates the stock market and publicly-owned corporations, to support a proposal that it require companies to report their political spending to stockholders and the public. The commission responded last week by unceremoniously dumping the proposed rule from its 2014 agenda.

Once just a hip way of raising money to make a movie or help out a good cause, crowdfunding is expanding to a whole new arena. But in the coming year, startups may be allowed to sell stock in their companies over the Internet to a national pool of small-time investors. For those investors, it's a chance to make a profit and possibly get in early on the next Twitter or Facebook. But it's also extremely risky, given that a majority of startups fail.

A new investigation uncovers the misdeeds of Rhode Island General Treasurer Gina Raimondo during her handling of the state’s Employee Retirement System. The report charges that Raimondo’s investment strategy is a lose-lose: “alternative investments both reduce returns and increase risk” and that probable candidate for governor is selling out Rhode Island’s public workers for an “opportunity to enrich herself and her hedge fund backers.”

The insider-trading lawsuit against Mark Cuban will continue after a federal judge turned down the billionaire Dallas Mavericks owner's attempt to dismiss the government's case as unproven. U.S. District Court Judge Sidney Fitzwater's ruling late Monday means that the case is likely to be decided by a jury of seven women and three men who heard Cuban testify for two days.

It was bad enough that Dodd-Frank under-protected the American public from predatory big banking, but Senators are now trying to further weaken the legislation and even make its existence completely moot. The Independent Agency Regulatory Analysis Act of 2013 is the latest bill that shifts the government's role as protector of the people to protector of the powerful.

Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson have released yet another austerity plan that lowers taxes on corporations while proposing Social Security and Medicare benefit cuts.

President Obama nominates Richard Cordray to continue as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Mary Jo White as Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).