Former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley, who is currently pursuing the Democratic Party’s 2016 presidential nomination, released a policy paper today laying out specific proposals to better regulate America’s financial industry (e.g., reinstating Glass-Steagall legislation). Good stuff! One problem, though. On his paper’s second page, O’Malley cites a satirical news website—and not just any satirical news website, but probably the worst one.

O’Malley writes:

Senior officials at the Department of Justice1, Securities Exchange Commission2, Treasury3 and other key departments have been deeply entrenched in the industries they are supposed to regulate, and often return to them after they leave government4. This practice undermines their independence and public trust in the federal government’s role of independent arbiter.

As Bloomberg’s Phil Mattingly points out on Twitter, the first footnote refers to a Daily Currant post from September 2014:

1 “Eric Holder Takes $77 Million Job with JP Morgan Chase” The Daily Currant (Sep. 26, 2014): http://dailycurrant.com/2014/09/26/eri…

Oy.

In case O’Malley or his supporters are reading this: The Daily Currant is a worthless satirical news website that accumulates Google Adsense revenue by publishing false stories which are just plausible enough for the average Internet user to share with their Facebook friends. As Dave Weigel wrote a few years back, the Currant “has fooled people into thinking Rick Santorum was on Grindr, that Michele Bachmann was going to ban falafel in public schools, and that Sarah Palin had joined Al-Jazeera.”

Previously:

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