Greg Kaufmann | The Nation

I spoke with Reverend Jesse Jackson about Rainbow PUSH Coalition’s 39^th Annual Conference, which begins tomorrow in Chicago and runs through Wednesday. He talked about its focus and what he hoped it would contribute to the progressive movement.

Jackson said tomorrow’s session will focus on the state of civil rights.

“Civil infrastructure has collapsed, the justice infrastructure,” he said. “Unenforced civil rights laws might be the defining issue of our time.”

Congressman Jerrold Nadler, Chair of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, held a hearing yesterday on Combating Predatory Lending Under the Fair Housing Act.

In his opening statement, Chairman Nadler spoke of “redlining” in the past, when people of color were denied credit based on race rather than creditworthiness, and the practice was “simply drawing a red line around a minority neighborhood and refusing to lend in that area.”

“What we witness today, however, is reverse redlining--a mortgage brokerage or bank’s practice of systematically singling out minority borrowers and neighborhoods for loans with inferior terms like high up-front fees, high interest rates, and lax underwriting practices,” said the Congressman. “It seems that everything old is new again. Here we are again looking at the impact of discriminatory lending practices on families and communities…. And what is most disgraceful is that it didn’t have to happen. Many could easily have qualified for conventional mortgages.”

Earlier this month, The Nation reported on questions being raised by the House Committee on Government and Oversight Reform regarding former New York Federal Reserve Bank Chair Stephen Friedman’s purchase of Goldman Sachs stock at a time when he was prohibited from even owning it.

The fact that Friedman nearly doubled his Goldman holdings in December 2008--while the public was still in the dark about which banks were benefiting from the AIG bailout and Goldman was the greatest domestic beneficiary to the tune of $13 billion in taxpayer money--not only led to his resignation from the Fed, it also put the incestuous and murky relationship between the Federal Reserve and Wall Street on full display.

Now Committee Chairman Edolphus Towns and Congressman Stephen Lynch have taken the investigation a step further, asking Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke for “all documents related to Mr. Friedman’s purchase of Goldman stock” and the granting of a waiver that allowed him to simultaneously serve on the Goldman and New York Fed boards.

 If you weren't convinced before that Ben Bernanke should be replaced as Chairman of the Federal Reserve you might be now. Wall Street's Humble Servant--Secretary Timothy Geithner--has warned that if Bernanke is replaced, "I think the markets would view that as a very troubling thing to the economy as a whole."

 Geithner and Bernanke's subservience to "the markets" at the expense of the public interest is key to why there is growing opposition to Bernanke serving a second term. His Senate reconfirmation vote was already delayed once, and according to The Hill, "no less than 13 Democratic and Republican senators" have now announced that they will vote against him----including Senators Bernie Sanders, Russ Feingold, Byron Dorgan, Barbara Boxer, and Jeff Merkley. Many more are on the fence.

No one has been more vocal in his opposition than Senator Sanders who placed a hold on Bernanke's nomination. In a statement released on Sunday, he said: "The issue for Democrats is whether they will allow Republicans to pretend to be the populist, anti-Wall Street party, or whether they will have the courage to stand up to Wall Street and bring in a Fed chairman who will represent the needs of working families rather than huge financial institutions… Ben Bernanke was the top economic advisor to George W. Bush. He was in lockstep agreement with Alan Greenspan, who has now endorsed him. These are the people who let Wall Street run amok."