Bill Black Bill Black is an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri – Kansas City (UMKC). He was the executive director of the Institute for Fraud Prevention from 2005-2007. He has taught previously at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin and at Santa Clara University, where he was also the distinguished scholar in residence for insurance law and a visiting scholar at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. He was litigation director of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, deputy director of the FSLIC, SVP and general counsel of the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco, and senior deputy chief counsel at the Office of Thrift Supervision. He was deputy director of the National Commission on Financial Institution Reform, Recovery and Enforcement. Black developed the concept of “control fraud," in which the CEO or head of state uses the entity as a “weapon.” Control frauds cause greater financial losses than all other forms of property crime combined and kill and maim thousands. He recently helped the World Bank develop anti-corruption initiatives and served as an expert for OFHEO in its enforcement action against Fannie Mae’s former senior management. He is the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One.

Sport: The Gay Antidote?

Gay bashers pedal yet another specious theory: homosexuality as effeminacy syndrome in need of a sporting cure.

Waymon Hudson’s column, “Karate Kick the Sissy Out of Your Son: Gay Panic as Advertising,” rightly excoriates a Key Biscayne karate “academy” for urging parents to sign their sons up in order to ensure that they will not become gay.

In the kind of “academy” I inhabit, the hucksters make the same pitch. Notre Dame law professor Gerard Bradley put himself in the news recently by claiming that Judge Walker should have removed himself from deciding the challenge to constitutionality of Proposition 8 because the judge…

Algebra for Dummies: Mathematical ‘Proof’ of the Inferiority of Homosexuals

Bill Black debunks a law professor’s tortured attempt to rationalize homophobia.

Most forms of open revulsion for despised minorities have been banished from academic literature. But the academic campaign against rights for gays is proud about its descent into ever more virulent attacks on gay people and homosexuality.

One stream of the attacks seeks to prove that gays and homosexual are inferior. The effort has been lead primarily by ultra-traditional Catholic scholars that have attempted to create a “new natural law” that would support the traditional Catholic positions on sex  –  that masturbation, all gay sex, contraception, all sex between unmarried adult…

Why Gay Opponents Hated and Feared the Proposition 8 Trial

Conservatives are arguing against gay marriage in a very limited way.

Notre Dame Law School Professor Gerard Bradley criticized United States District Court Judge Vaughan Walker, who heard the challenge to the constitutionality of California’s Proposition 8 on the grounds that the judge was unfit to hear the case if the reports that he was gay were correct (see my post on New Deal 2.0: “Gay Judges Need Not Apply“).  Proposition 8 sought to overturn the decision of the California Supreme Court that it was unconstitutional to forbid gays to marry.  Bradley also complained that the trial that Judge Walker conducted demonstrated his…

Conservative Logic: Gay Judges Need Not Apply

Exposing conservative ‘logic’ in the ongoing struggle for gay marriage.

Notre Dame Law School Professor Gerard Bradley launched a preemptive attack on United States District Court Judge Vaughan Walker when the court announced that it would release his decision on the challenge to the constitutionality of California’s Proposition 8.  Proposition 8 sought to overturn the decision of the California Supreme Court that it was unconstitutional to forbid gays to marry.  Bradley posted his attack on Fox:  Why Has Media Ignored Judge’s Possible Bias In California’s Gay Marriage Case?

The most troubling aspect of California’s gay marriage case, is that the judge’s possible bias,…

Busting NewsBusters

NewsBusters should try something truly radical: work alongside the bridge builders.

I learned about the existence of NewsBusters when its staffer, Alex Fitzsimmons, wrote a column entitled: MSNBC Promotes Findings of Roosevelt Institute Liberals Pushing ‘New Family Strategy.’ NewsBusters took the position that interviewers must issue a warning label when they present the views of a “liberal” or an “openly gay” scholar:

Carbone and Cahn are not disinterested academics, as Jansing led viewers to believe. Rather, they are liberal activists nostalgic for the sexual revolution of the 1960’s and the radical ideology it promulgated.

Jansing also managed to overlook the resume of Jonathan Rauch, an openly…

Why the Ferocity of Attacks on the Bridge Builders?

The country needs bridge-builders, not dividers.

Today I am thinking about the things that bind us together.  On July 27, June Carbone (my spouse) and Naomi Cahn, co-authors of Red Families v. Blue Families, were interviewed on MSNBC’s afternoon news broadcast.  Their book tries to bridge the political gaps and help a consensus emerge that will strengthen American families.  After reading the web responses to their interview, it dawned on me that it is June and Naomi’s effort to build that bridge that the “dividers” most fear.

Alex Fitzsimmons led the charge.  The title of his comment demonstrates the tenor of the…

Bill Black to BofA Chairman: Racist bank adviser in Germany must go

Bill Black’s letter to BofA Chairman Walter Massey calls for the immediate firing of Hans-Olaf Henkel, the bank’s Senior Advisor in Germany, over issues of bigotry. Black blasts Henkel as one of the chief architects of the global financial crisis — and a dangerous hate-mongerer.

From William K. Black, Associate Professor of Economics and Law, University of Missouri - Kansas City

Re: Hans-Olaf Henkel, Bank of America’s Senior Advisor in Germany

Dear Dr. Massey,

I am writing in my individual capacity. It came to my attention yesterday that Bank of America’s “senior advisor” in Germany is Hans-Olaf Henkel. I believe that Bank of…

Testimony Reveals Need for Thorough Investigation of AIG Deals

William Black calls for a deeper investigation of the conflicts of interest that shaped the AIG bailout.

The truly extraordinary disclosures were that Paulson, Bernanke, and Geithner all purported to have had no involvement in one of the most expensive decisions in history — the decision to pay 100 cents on the dollar to the least deserving of recipients (and who, if Geithner’s testimony were to be believed, did not need to receive that largess) — and the unprincipled and indefensible decision to try to get AIG to cover up that fact and the beneficiaries of that largess. Indeed, Bernanke testified…

Anti-Regulators: The Federal Reserve’s War Against Effective Regulation

Roosevelt Institute Braintruster William Black warns that the Fed’s failed leadership on regulation could lead us over another financial cliff–more catastrophic than the last.

The first decade of this century proved how essential effective regulators are to prevent economic catastrophe and epidemics of fraud. The most severe failure was at the Federal Reserve. The Fed’s failure was the most harmful because it had unique authority to prevent the fraud epidemic and the resulting economic crisis. The Fed refused to exercise that authority despite knowing of the fraud epidemic and potential for crisis.

The Fed’s failures were legion, but five are worthy of particular…

Geithner as Martyr to an Ungrateful Nation: Bo Cutter’s Tragicomic Portrayal of Tim as a ‘Man for all Seasons” (Part 2)

This is the second installment in my comments on Bo Cutter’s essay defending Treasury Secretary Geithner. Bo was a managing partner of Warburg Pincus, a major global private equity firm and led President Obama’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) transition team. He was Bob Rubin’s deputy at the National Economic Council. The first installment discussed Bo’s extraordinary indictment of the finance industry.

Bo views Geithner as a martyr subjected to unfounded, ungrateful attacks for his actions that prevented the Second Great Depression. Bo doesn’t have much use for Americans that are upset with the senior managers of the finance industry. (This…