The real challenge for Mr. Bush is negotiating the competing pressures of the so-called “invisible” and actual primaries. The invisible primary is the competition for the support of party officials and donors with the influence and money necessary to propel a candidate toward the party’s nomination. A candidate who wins the invisible primary decisively almost always goes on to win the nomination.
.. The catch, of course, is that the source of Mr. Bush’s appeal among the Republican donor class is a message and tone that often seems close to attacking conservatives as ideologues.
.. Mr. Bush could still win even if Tea Party supporters opposed him by a wide margin. Mr. Romney managed to steer down the same narrow path to victory in 2012. It’s a path that starts by consolidating the establishment wing of the party in the invisible primary. It ends by winning a protracted fight against an underfunded conservative opponent who can’t break through in the delegate-rich blue states that are often needed to win the party’s nomination, even though the party struggles to win them in presidential elections.
.. It is an arduous path to victory. But candidates with the favor of the establishment have won nearly every recent nominating contest for a reason: It brings big advantages. And the Republican establishment doesn’t appear to have too many other choices. If top G.O.P. donors are indeed choosing between Mr. Bush, Mr. Christie and Mr. Romney, they might not have a better option than Mr. Bush.
The Secret Goldman Sachs Tapes (Michael Lewis)
It’s an extraordinary document. There is not space here to do it justice, but the gist is this: The Fed failed to regulate the banks because it did not encourage its employees to ask questions, to speak their minds or to point out problems.
.. In 2012, Goldman was rebuked by a Delaware judge for its behavior during a corporate acquisition. Goldman had advised one energy company, El Paso Corp., as it sold itself to another energy company, Kinder Morgan, in which Goldman actually owned a $4 billion stake, and a Goldman banker had a big personal investment. The incident forced the Fed to ask Goldman to see its conflict of interest policy. It turned out that Goldman had no conflict of interest policy — but when Segarra insisted on saying as much in her report, her bosses tried to get her to change her report. Under pressure, she finally agreed to change the language in her report, but she couldn’t resist telling her boss that she wouldn’t be changing her mind. Shortly after that encounter, she was fired.)
See How Citigroup Wrote a Bill So It Could Get a Bailout
Citigroup lobbyists drafted a bill to allow more risky dealings by taxpayer-backed banks and—what do you know?—the House financial services committee passed nearly identical legislation.
Citi’s move to expand the types of derivatives it can trade comes as banks have increasingly been shifting derivatives out of their investment banking divisions (which aren’t backed by FDIC insurance) and into taxpayer-backed entities. “The rule is needed more than ever,” says Mike Konczal, an expert on financial reform at the Roosevelt Institute. The financial services committee passed the Citi-written bill on a 53-to-6 vote; all the no votes came from Democrats
Agreement To Increase Max Donation Size from $97,200 to $776,600
After successfully pushing legislation in March to abolish public financing for party conventions, some Republicans had become worried about how they would pay for their 2016 convention, scheduled to be held in Cleveland, in Mr. Boehner’s home state, Ohio. Some feared that the party would have to scale back the convention, losing clout and prestige to the big-money outside groups that are playing bigger roles in campaigns.
.. All in all, the new accounts would vastly expand the amount that wealthy donors could give to party committees. Under current rules, the most one individual could donate to party committees in a given year totals about $97,200. Should the new budget agreement be signed by President Obama, that amount would skyrocket to $776,600, or $1.56 million over a two-year election cycle.
.. Democrats and Republicans alike said on Friday that even if the new rules bolstered the influence of large donors, they would also improve disclosure and accountability by pushing more donor dollars into party committees, rather than into “super PACs” and other less-regulated outside groups.