Author Archives: Richard Smith

Eurostress quick take

Richard covering for Yves here, in case that maritime internet connection, which seems OK for terse emails, is not so great for navigating 100 eurowebsites, to whizz through as much detail as possible. Just seven failures, making Chris Whalen’s EU stress tests: who knows, who cares? the main takeaway, I suppose. Not enough blood to […]

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How HAMP Makes Elizabeth Warren The Only Choice For Consumer Protection » New Deal 2.0

Crossposted from New Deal 2.0. By Mike Konczal, a Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. No one else has been a stronger advocate for public disclosure. There’s a debate going on about who should be nominated to run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau at the Federal Reserve. One side says Elizabeth Warren, while another says someone […]

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Eurostress roundup

Tomorrow’s the big day. German overview, with scenarios on page 2. The D-Day metaphor is a waggish translation choice by the Englishers at “Der Spiegel” (the original has “Nervöse Finanzbranche”). Summaries of the results will be published at the CEBS, possibly at 18:00 CEST; which is 11:00 EST, if that helps some of you, but […]

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The Irish mess

Just a reminder of one little corner of the toxic debt fiasco that has plenty of bite still left in it. The Irish banks got in a big mess with duff RE loans. The government swapped discounted bad loans for government-issued bonds. A new agency, NAMA, monitors the duff loan portfolio. There are half a […]

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Bankrupt GM uses $3.5 billion of taxpayers’ money to buy subprime auto lender AmeriCredit and signal a return to the good old days for Wall Street

One obvious consequence of “sweeping” legislation is that nothing gets done while we wait for it to pass and go into effect. Now that it has passed, we will probably start to see a lot more activity in previously dead areas. Perceived uncertainty and the volatility of government actions has been reduced. As the various […]

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The bailouts continue: The Economic Populist

Cross posted from The Economic Populist. By Garrett Johnson Most people think that the Wall Street bailouts ended at least a year ago. They would be wrong. (Reuters) – Increased housing commitments swelled U.S. taxpayers’ total support for the financial system by $700 billion in the past year to around $3.7 trillion, a government watchdog […]

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FINRA are so…decorative

FINRA is the largest independent securities regulator in the US. Our chief role is to protect investors by maintaining the fairness of the US capital blah blah blah. Oh, come off it. The largest what securities regulator? The largest independent securities what? DB misled investors by selling MBS with incorrect delinquency data. The disclosure said […]

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Caught napping, sorry folks…

A surprise for the ratings agencies, the bond market, and me, too – this has to be a late change in the Financial Reform bill, and it’s a corker. From the WSJ: The nation’s three dominant credit-ratings providers have made an urgent new request of their clients: Please don’t use our credit ratings. The odd […]

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Fabrice Tourre’s defense: a Gallic shrug

Joint post by Richard Smith and Tom Adams, a securities lawyer The fabulous Fab has entered his solo response to the SEC’s complaint. It provides an interesting glimpse into what are certainly complex legal strategies by Tourre, Goldman and the SEC.  The list of his stated defenses are at the bottom. First, the response may […]

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Deficits Do Matter, But Not the Way You Think

Crossposted from New Deal 2.0 By L. Randall Wray, Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Budget deficits and government spending are necessary to end today’s crisis. In recent months, a form of mass hysteria has swept the country as fear of “unsustainable” budget deficits replaced the earlier concern about the financial crisis, […]

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Decoding the NY Fed on Shadow Banking

Back to this thing to try to work out what it’s driving at. Yves wrote: I have serious trouble with its bottom line: We document that the shadow banking system became severely strained during the financial crisis because, like traditional banks, shadow banks conduct credit, maturity, and liquidity transformation, but unlike traditional financial intermediaries, they […]

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The Summer(s) of Our Discontent

Crossposted from New Deal 2.0 Another volley from Marshall Auerback, Senior Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, and a market analyst and commentator. Larry Summers’s misguided approach to deficits and surpluses could strangle our long-term vitality. Virtually every profile on Larry Summers tells us that he is one of the most brilliant economists of his generation, […]

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The Trouble with Tim’s Treasury

Crossposted from New Deal 2.0 By Marshall Auerback, Senior Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, and a market analyst and commentator. FinReg may fall short if power is channeled into Geithner’s hands. More depressing news from the “change” President.  The Washington Post has reported that one of the major impacts of the FinReg bill passed last week […]

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