An uncertain future for Dodd-Frank

NEW YORK TIME EDITORIAL

There have been powerful reminders in recent days that the financial system needs more regulatory vigilance, not less. But they come just as Republicans are setting their agenda in Congress, complete with vows to weaken the Dodd-Frank reform law.

On Thursday, The Times’s Nathaniel Popper reported that Goldman Sachs is using the bank’s money to make big bets in real estate. That appears to be a violation of the spirit, if not the letter, of Dodd-Frank, which aims to avoid bailouts by reducing concentrated risks at banks. MORE…

The growing shadow of political money

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL

Like bettors checking Las Vegas odds on the Super Bowl, specialists in the nation’s booming campaign finance industry are tracking the action in the 2016 elections, not so much to assess the candidates as to see how much of a payout is likely this time around in the grand casino of American politics.

The record total of $6.3 billion spent on the presidential and congressional elections of 2012 is only the starting point. Estimates of next year’s likely total are running between $7.5 billion and $8 billion. This moneyed universe is certain to keep expanding as the political industry’s managers and their candidates master the unlimited fund-raising and spending devices they now have at hand. MORE…

Generous Republican benefits

JENNIFER SENIOR/NEW YORK TIMES

Last week, President Obama signed a memorandum that would allow employees at federal agencies to take up to six weeks of paid parental leave, and he has made it clear that he thinks Congress should extend paid leave to employees in the private sector, too.

No one expects the Republicans who control Congress to take him up on his invitation. Any attempts to thicken the social safety net through government spending are philosophically inimical to the G.O.P. point of view. Yet here’s the irony: In their own offices, Republicans are often very generous with federal money, giving their staffs plenty of compensated time off to care for a child. MORE…

George Will: Vermont’s Bernie Sanders has mountains to climb

The young man who answered the phone in the Senate office of Vermont’sBernie Sanders told the caller, a would-be campaign contributor, that it is illegal for funds to be accepted on federal property. He advised the person to contact Sanders’s political operation, which might become a presidential campaign. MORE…

Ruth Marcus: A GOP ‘sanity caucus’?

Are we witnessing the emergence of what might be called a new “sanity caucus” among House Republicans?

This month, 26 of them voted against an amendment to undo President Obama’s program to shield so-called dreamers from deportation. MORE...

Nicholas Kristof: Where’s the empathy?

YAMHILL, Ore. — THE funeral for my high school buddy Kevin Green is Saturday, near this town where we both grew up.

The doctors say he died at age 54 of multiple organ failure, but in a deeper sense he died of inequality and a lack of good jobs. MORE…

Maureen Dowd: Running for darling (Obama, not Brady)

WASHINGTON — THE talk up in Boston is all about deflation while the talk down here is all about inflation.

Our sleek, techie president, whose battery dies faster than an iPhone’s, was fully charged Tuesday night for the State of the Union. MORE…