Vermont Citizens Push to Form a State Bank, But Will Ratings Agencies Kill the Idea?
Martha R wrote to tell me that a serious effort is underway in Vermont to launch a state bank.
Read more...Category Archives: Banking industry
Quelle Surprise! Banks Are Opposed to More Liquid Markets When They Don’t Make Enough From Them
Bloomberg has an intriguing story about a bit of lobbying the big dealer banks are engaged in via a group called the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee, which represents 15 out of the total of 22 primary dealers (a primary dealer, among other things, gets to bid for its own account at Treasury bond auctions). Of course, the object of their efforts is to improve their profitability, here by putting parties they regard as competitors at more of a disadvantage.
Read more...Matt Stoller: Greta Krippner’s “Capitalizing on Crisis” Describes Real Origins of Financial Deregulation
ves here. Having lived through some of these developments, I concur with Krippner’s observation that financial deregulation was well underway prior to the Reagan era and the most important driver was interest rate volatility, which wreaked havoc with interest rate caps and other policies that made sense only if inflation stayed within a limited and not all that high range. But similar deregulatory forces were underway in the securities industry side as well.
Read more...Pimco, Blackrock Mulling Suing Ocwen Over Abusive Servicing
Funny what a difference a few days makes.
Read more...Better Markets Sues Department of Justice and Eric Holder Over JP Morgan Settlement
The public interest group Better Markets today filed suit against the Department of Justice and Eric Holder, alleging that the so-called $13 billion settlement that the Federal government entered into with the nation’s biggest bank was improper due to its secrecy and lack of third-party review.
Read more...Whatever You Do, Don’t Pay Attention to the Rising Eurozone Stresses
One of the noteworthy elements of Davos, at least according to media accounts, was the cheery, self-congratulatory tone among the Davos Men, at least until the final day, when the emerging markets rout began. But one of the front they thought they’d gotten under control, Europe, may be about to enter a new phase of political stress.
Read more...Twitter 2, JP Morgan, 0: Bythe Masters Withdraws After One Day Appointment as CFTC Advisor
This was not a world-record revolving door stint, but the head-spinning was of the good sort for a change.
Read more...New York’s Benjamin Lawsky Rattling Banks With Currency, Servicing Probes
It’s been so long that America has had a regulator that is serious about regulating that it’s hard to remember how they operate.
Read more...Bill Black: Jamie Dimon’s $10 Million Raise is a “Common Sense” Fraud Reward
Yves here. This has been such a busy week that I’ve been remiss about commenting on how Dimon’s board rewarded him despite the London Whale fiasco and the revelation of pervasive regulatory abuses. Clearly, they thought he bought the bank’s way out of trouble on the cheap, disproving the wailing in the financial firm toadying media that the Morgan bank had been ill-treated by the Administration.
Read more...Former IMF Chief Economist, Now India’s Central Bank Governor Rajan Takes Shot at Bernanke’s Destabilizing Policies
As Bernanke is about to take leave of office, attacks on his policies are becoming louder, thanks to financial markets turmoil resulting from the Bernanke/Geithner approach to the crisis: do whatever it takes to restore as much of status quo ante as possible. The problem, of course, is that status quo ante is what got us in this mess in the first place.
Read more...George Mangus Warns of Broad Impact of Emerging Markets Turbulence
In the runup to the global financial crisis, George Magnus, who was then chief economist at UBS, was one of the most insightful commentators and was early to call how bad things might get. He’s back to sound alarms about the emerging markets turmoil.
Read more...Mr. Market is Getting Frazzled Over the Fed’s Neglect of Its Pet Wishes
A brief surge of optimism, in the form of a short-lived rally in the belegured Turkish Lira and South African rand after their central banks raised interest rates to try to halt the plunge in currency values, has fizzled. And the Fed reducing its dosage of market tonic, in the form of QE, only soured investors’ already bad mood.
Read more...Mirabile Dictu! Post Office Bank Concept Gets Big Boost
Naked Capitalism readers have frequently called for the Post Office to offer basic banking services, as post offices long have in many countries, notably Japan. That idea has gotten an important official endorsement in the form of a detailed, extensively researched concept paper prepared by the Postal Service’s Inspector General.
Read more...The Emerging Markets Rout Abates….for Now
Journalists and laypeople tend to use stock markets at their proxy for economic and financial market conditions. The performance of US stock markets looked like an encouraging return to a semblance of normalcy after last week’s squall, until a wave of selling in the final hour, with 600 million shares of volume, pushed the major indexes solidly into negative territory. As of this writing, that barometer is still a bit wobbly. Australia was down 1.26% overnight and the Nikkei off .17%. But Chinese and the Singapore markets are up, as are European and the S&P and DJIA indices.
But some of the explanations are less persuasive than others.
Read more...Ann Pettifor on Combatting the Despotic Power of Finance
Economist Ann Pettifor discusses how economies around the world moved from using borrowing to support productive investments to fueling speculation and consumption, and how that led to the financial crisis. She also describes how the post-crisis response to the debt overhang isn’t merely ineffective but in fact counterproductive.
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