It’s actually getting amusing to watch the banking industry try to pull out heavy but rusty artillery and aim at a regulator who looks like he is about to *gasp* make them comply with some rules they were certain they’d be able to evade.
Read more...t’s really hard to convey a sense of how utterly grotesque the looting that Promontory Financial Group conducted on the misnamed Independent Foreclosure Reviews.
Read more...As readers of the financial press may recall, there was a kerfluffle over the fact that Greece had used a currency trades designed by Goldman in 2001 to mask the level of its indebtedness and secure Eurozone entry. A much bigger and more costly shoe of the same type has dropped in Italy and it directly implicates the current ECB chief, Mario Draghi.
Read more...Yves here. Readers may recall that Gary Gensler, the head of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, is being pushed out by Obama. His planned replacement is so appallingly lightweight (oh, and formerly in a very junior role at Goldman) as to assure that all she’ll be able to do is take dictation from financial firm lobbyists.
But Gensler may be having a last laugh before he leaves office.
Read more...If anyone doubted that Ben Benanke’s “we’re convinced the economy is getting better, so take your lumps” press conference after the FOMC statement last week was awfully reminiscent of 1937, the newly-released Bank of International Settlements annual report is tantamount to a kick to the groin. And to change metaphors, if the Fed’s sudden hawkish posture is playing Russian roulette with the real economy, the BIS just voted loudly for putting a couple more bullets in the cylinder.
Read more...It sometimes feels like a Sisyphean task to keep discussing how Americans were thrown under the bus in the various mortgage settlements reached in 2011 and 2012. Needless to say, whistleblowers continue to come forward and describe widespread abuse even though the officialdom would have you believe otherwise.
Read more...The idea was to de-couple the banking from the debt crisis. The reality is that they propose to do nothing of the sort. And deposits are now officially at risk.
Read more...Yves here. I have to say I’m still gobsmacked by the Fed’s belief that the labor markets are showing meaningful improvement, and the further “clarification” that this means the central bank thinks it’s on track to start easing up on bond buying this year.
Read more...New York’s Superintendent of Financial Services, Benjamin Lawsky, has taken scored some significant wins from what would normally be a pretty disadvantaged spot.
Read more...Jefferson County’s sewer system train wreck is now looking an awful lot like the periphery country in Europe mess.
Read more...We’ve suggested that the Fed has drunken a bit too much of its own confidence Kool-Aid to be talking about tapering QE. The problem now, as we’ve stressed, is that the effect of QE may prove to be asymmetrical.
Read more...Obama is no longer bothering to pretend that he is anything other than a stooge for banks and other big money interests.
Read more...The Financial Times has caught a significant revolving door that its business press peers have largely overlooked.
Read more...Yves here. While most investors and analysts were busy fixating on the Fed’s taper and the unemployment report and the Abenomics roller coaster, some important housing market news slipped under the radar.
Read more...Does anybody have a clear vision of the desirable financial system of the future?
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