Today, the Occupy Wall Street movement is taking part in a series of actions they’ve called “Occupy Our Homes,” aimed at preventing foreclosures and protecting those still struggling to keep their homes amidst the lingering effects of the Great Recession. ThinkProgress’ Zaid Jilani explained one of the planned actions here.

At least one major mortgage lender is taking the Occupy Our Homes movement quite seriously. In an email obtained and posted by the financial website Zero Hedge, Bank of America’s field services operation warned about Occupy activities, saying “we need to be prepared” and advising bank representatives against interacting with protesters:

On Tuesday December 6th there is a potential nationwide protest planned that could impact our industry. We believe protests will likely take place tomorrow at auction sites, homes that are being foreclosed, homes in the eviction stage and vacant homes. We need to be prepared.

1. Your safety is our primary concern, so do not engage with the protesters.

2. While in neighborhoods, please take notice of vacant BAC Field Services managed homes and ensure they are secured.

See the email here. ThinkProgress contacted Bank of America, and a spokesperson confirmed that the email came from the bank. “This is standard operating procedure,” said BofA spokesperson Jumana Bauwens. “The safety of our associates and third party contractors is our first priority. It is the bank’s policy to protect and secure our properties for the investors who own them. Bank of America is committed to helping our customers with home retention solutions and other foreclosure avoidance programs. Foreclosure is always our last resort.”

But if any major mortgage lender deserves to be protested when it comes to foreclosures, it’s Bank of America. Not only has the bank dragged its feet when it comes to getting borrowers into sustainable loan modifications, but it has engaged in some truly absurd foreclosures, including foreclosing on a man whose home was destroyed by a hurricane and breaking into another borrower’s home to incorrectly repossess her pet parrot. Perhaps the banks’ failure on the foreclosure front has something to do with its CEO’s belief that foreclosures are a good thing.

Even though the Dodd-Frank financial reform law was signed more than a year and a half ago, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which that law created, is still without a director. Republicans have been filibustering President Obama’s nominee for the position, former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray, in an attempt to get Congress to gut the agency’s powers.

Cordray is extremely qualified for the position, yet the GOP is holding his nomination hostage because they disagree with the entire idea of the CFPB, preferring, as they said during the debate over Dodd-Frank, that bank profits take precedence over consumer protection. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has even said that the GOP won’t confirm any nominee, no matter who it is or what his/her qualifications are, until the Bureau’s structure is changed.

Despite all that, Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) today charged the administration with playing “political games” when it comes to the nomination, adding that he thinks people across the nation want to see the consumer watchdog’s powers watered down:

I don’t know whether you’re enjoying being part of a political game that’s taking place regarding this, but I would just say that, look, some just basic balances, checks and balances, with [the CFPB] I think would cause the logjam that’s taking place on this to really be broken up. And I’m sort of surprised that y’all continue to be a part of this political game that’s taking place, but I do hope at some point in time we’ll be able to have a meeting of minds and just a simple kind of thing that most people in Tennessee and across our country would like to see, and that is some accountability.

Watch it here (starting at 1:37:40).

The gall of a Republican senator calling out the administration for playing political games when the GOP has been blocking the CFPB director’s nomination for months is quite stunning. That they’ve been blocking Cordray in order to gut the agency’s ability to do its job is even worse.

Fortunately, there seem to be some cracks forming in the GOP’s facade, as Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) has said that he will vote to confirm Cordray’s nomination when it hits the Senate floor this week. As ThinkProgress Justice editor Ian Millhiser noted today, if the GOP continues to block Cordray’s nomination, Obama can break out the Roosevelt precedent to let Cordray start doing his job.

In 1910, former President Theodore Roosevelt gave his rousing “New Nationalism” speech in Osawatomie, Kansas, where he called for new approaches to dealing with the problems the nation faced. President Obama visited Osawatomie today, and in his own speech — his first major economic speech since Occupy Wall Street protests began highlighting income inequality and corporate greed — Obama called for a new approach to addressing America’s current economic challenges.

In the process, Obama fired a shot across the bow of 30 years of conservative economic theory, a shot that was sorely needed but has been left in the chamber by Democratic presidents and political leaders, Obama included, far too often. Trickle down economics, the conservative theory embraced by Ronald Reagan and virtually every conservative since, “doesn’t work,” Obama declared. And even as conservatives have clung to the idea in the face of overwhelming evidence against it, “it has never worked,” Obama added:

Now, just as there was in Teddy Roosevelt’s time, there’s been a certain crowd in Washington for the last few decades who respond to this economic challenge with the same old tune. “The market will take care of everything,” they tell us. If only we cut more regulations and cut more taxes – especially for the wealthy – our economy will grow stronger. Sure, there will be winners and losers. But if the winners do really well, jobs and prosperity will eventually trickle down to everyone else. And even if prosperity doesn’t trickle down, they argue, that’s the price of liberty.

It’s a simple theory – one that speaks to our rugged individualism and healthy skepticism of too much government. And that theory fits well on a bumper sticker. Here’s the problem: It doesn’t work. It has never worked. It didn’t work when it was tried in the decade before the Great Depression. It’s not what led to the incredible post-war boom of the 50s and 60s. And it didn’t work when we tried it during the last decade.

Watch it:

Obama is right. The trickle-down policies put in place since the Reagan administration haven’t brought prosperity to the middle- and working-classes; if anything, they have made prosperity an illusion for the vast majority of Americans who don’t directly benefit from them.

Tax cuts for the wealthy, primarily those passed by Republicans in 2001 and 2003, lowered rates for the richest Americans to historically low levels — but those cuts were followed by massive deficits and weak job growth, not the economic boom conservatives promised. Anti-regulatory policies helped lead to a predatory financial system that busted the housing market, nearly collapsed the financial industry, and threw America into a recession that largely spared — and even enriched — the nation’s wealthiest. At the same time, millions of lower- and middle-class Americans lost jobs, retirement funds, and any hope of economic prosperity in their lifetime. Under 30 years of trickle down policies, wage growth has stagnated even as CEO pay has boomed.

Unfortunately, Obama’s speech won’t be enough to make such policies disappear. Republicans continue to espouse the same ideas — loosening regulations and cutting taxes on the rich while slashing programs that benefit the working- and middle-classes — in their attempts to bring about recovery. If history is any indicator, however, those policies would again fail to boost job creation and economic growth. As Obama noted today, those policies don’t work, and they never have.

Republican lawmakers are struggling to shake off the view that they’re only out to help “the haves” over “the have-nots.” Today on Fox and Friends, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) insisted that he along with other Republicans are fighting the tide of gratuitous benefits Congress has unnecessarily bestowed upon America’s millionaires. “We obviously don’t think that’s fair,” he said.

But when considering the Democrats’ compromise to renew the soon-to-expire payroll tax cut for middle-class Americans, McCain opted for another priority. “We need to come to an agreement” on a repatriation holiday for multinational corporations, he said. Instead of ensuring that working families get to keep $1,000 in their pockets, McCain would rather allow corporations to bring back overseas profits at a dramatically lower tax rate, asking, “Why don’t we do that?”:

MCCAIN: But most of all, we need to come to an agreement on things like repatriation of the $1.5 trillion dollars that’s sitting overseas. We could give them a lower tax rate — a much lower tax rate to bring that money home and create jobs. Why don’t we do that? All we’re going to do is continue the fight that we are in and it’s very unfortunate and we Republicans have to stand back and give an overall plan to get our economy going again and give our businesses some confidence.

Watch it:

McCain’s preference for helping corporations over middle-class families is not just bad priorities, it’s bad economics. The Congressional Research Service found that repatriation holidays in the past offered “little evidence” of new investments. Indeed, the companies that took advantage of the holiday ended up cutting tens of thousands of jobs. In 2004, corporations used 92 percent of their repatriated profits to “enrich their executives and buy back their own shares, not to invest in job creation.”

Sacrificing the payroll tax cut for such a policy only compounds the negative consequences. Macroeconomic Advisers point out that a lapse in the payroll tax cut for 113 million households “would reduce GDP growth by 0.5 percent and cost the economy 400,000 jobs.” Barclays PLC said that, without the extension, it would “drop its growth forecast by 1.5% for the first quarter of next year.”

Fifty-eight percent of Americans want Congress to renew the payroll tax break for the middle class. But McCain and the Norquistian contingent of Congress have one word for that hope: “Chicken shit.”

Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL)

Last month, a 60 Minutes investigation revealed that House Financial Services Committee Chairman Spencer Bachus (R-AL) made $30,000 trading on information that he received in private briefings during the 2008 financial crisis. Embarrassed by the revelation that representatives are exploiting their positions for profit, there’s been a flurry of activity on Capitol Hill to pass legislation that prevents members of Congress from trading on inside information.

Perhaps to atone for — or deflect attention from — his past wrongdoing, Bachus himself is one of the members proposing such legislation:

Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.) — in the midst of battling allegations of insider trading — has introduced legislation that would require members to place their assets in blind trusts run by independent managers. [...]

The legislation states that if any member fails to comply, the attorney general could bring civil action against them and they could face a penalty of up to $50,000. [...]

“The public has an absolute right to demand that the people they elect to represent them in Congress conduct themselves according to the highest ethical standards and do not seek to profit from their positions.”

In the meantime, the House Financial Services Committee will hold a hearing on the STOCK Act — or Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge — on Tuesday. It would prohibit members and federal workers from trading on nonpublic information they’ve come across through their work and require them to report any securities transaction of more than $1,000 within 90 days.

Appearing on MSNBC’s Morning Joe today, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) said she would never vote to raise taxes on millionaires under any circumstance, even if the tax exempted small businesses (as the GOP always falsely characterizes millionaires as being overwhelmingly small business owners):

HOST: Is there any scenario in which you would for a tax on millionaires if it keeps businesses, small businesses, out of the loop?

BACHMANN: No. I would not. Because if you look historically at the data, it has led to less job creation than more. And it drove people out of the sate of New Jersey.

Watch it:

It’s unclear what tax data Bachmann — a former federal tax attorney — is referring to, as historical trends show the opposite. As Center for American Progress Director of Tax and Budget Policy Michael Linden found, “in the past 60 years, job growth has actually been greater in years when the top income tax rate was much higher than it is now.” In fact, “if you ranked each year since 1950 by overall job growth, the top five years would all boast marginal tax rates at 70 percent or higher.”

Bachmann’s claim about New Jersey is also not born out by the facts. A major study on the effect of the millionaires surtax found that New Jersey’s millionaire population actually grew while the tax was in place, even through the recession. The tax’s impact on millionaires leaving the state was “close to zero,” the study concluded. Meanwhile, the tax is overwhelmingly popular; a Quinnipiac University poll released last month found that 64 percent of New Jersey residents want to revive the tax, which Gov. Chris Christie (R) killed, while only 28 percent opposed reinstating it too.

A former venture capitalist with a net worth in the neighborhood of $250 million, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) has struggled with the perception that he is the candidate of the one percent, particularly since the 99 Percent Movement turned America’s focus to rising income inequality and corporate greed coming from Wall Street. Former Louisiana Gov. Buddy Roemer (R), in fact, labeled Romney as such last week, stating plainly that “Mitt Romney represents the one percent.”

Romney’s presidential campaign has already received significant backing from Wall Street bankers and traders, and now, he is benefiting from the strongest backing of American billionaires. More than 10 percent of the United States 412 billionaires, in fact, have donated to the Romney campaign, according to the Washington Post:

Romney has drawn the most support from billionaires, with at least 42 donating to his campaign. Obama is not far behind, with at least 30 billionaire supporters. Rick Perry and Jon Huntsman Jr. follow with 20 and 12, respectively, according to donor rolls and the current Forbes magazine list of 412 American billionaires.

Romney’s largest billionaire donor thus far is hedge fund manager John Paulson, who has given $1 million to Restore Our Future PAC, the super PAC set up by Romney’s former advisers. Paulson, who is worth an estimated $16 billion, made millions of dollars shorting the housing market before the mortgage collapse that sparked the global financial crisis and American recession. Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder and developer and failed media tycoon Sam Zell are also among Romney’s largest billionaire donors.

Obama’s largest billionaire donor, industrialist Leo Blavatnik, has also donated to Romney. And while Obama has collected significant amounts of money from wealthy donors, his campaign has taken a higher percentage of small donations than it did in 2008, according to an earlier Post report.

One of the more pernicious forms of predatory lending is payday lending, which involves firms giving usually low-income workers very short-term, high-interest loans in order to help them pay for necessities until they receive their next paycheck. While this may sound like a valuable service, the interest rates on the loans are so high that many borrowers get caught in a cycle in which they’re constantly taking out new loans to cover the new bills that they can no longer afford, due to having paid back the last loan.

In fact, the Center for Responsible Lending has found 76 percent of payday loan volume (and $3.5 billion in annual fees) is due to “churning,” which is repeat borrowing by customers who paid off their loan, but because of the interest, require another loan before their next paycheck. And according to Credit Slips’ Nathalie Martin, a professor at the University of New Mexico, the nation’s biggest banks are, in a big way, financing this predatory lending:

– Major banks provide over $1.5 Billion in credit available to fund major payday lending companies.

– The major banks funding payday lending include Wells Fargo, Bank of America, US Bank, JP Morgan Bank, and National City (PNC Financial Services Group).

– All together, the major banks directly finance the loans and operations of (at minimum) 38% of the entire payday lending industry, based on store locations.

– The major banks indirectly fund approximately 450,000 payday loans per year totaling $16.4 Billion in short-term payday loans.

– Wells Fargo is a major financier of payday lending and is involved with financing companies that operate one third (32%) of the entire payday lending industry, based on store locations.

– All of these above mentioned banks received TARP bailout funds in 2008-09 and have benefited from accessing capital at exceptionally low interest rates from the Federal Reserve.

About 120 million payday loans are made annually in the U.S., with an average interest rate of 455 percent. One of the tasks of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will be to get a handle on this sort of lending, once the Bureau gets past Republican obstruction, and it seems like chasing down payday lenders is going to lead the CFPB right to the front doors of some of the nation’s financial behemoths.