Occupy the SEC to Jamie Dimon: We Told You So
By Occupy the SEC
Jamie Dimon’s plan to enfeeble the Dodd-Frank reforms, specifically the Volcker rule, has blown up spectacularly.
Read more...Category Archives: Banking industry
Robert Shiller is Wrong
By David Llewellyn-Smith, the founding publisher and former editor-in-chief of The Diplomat magazine, now the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics website. He is also the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut. Cross posted from MacroBusiness
The American academic Robert Shiller has taken another contrarian tack with his latest book Finance and the Good Society. His claim is that Western finance has lost the sense of virtue that it once had.
Read more...JP Morgan Loss Bomb Confirms That It’s Time to Kill VaR
One of the amusing bits of the hastily arranged JP Morgan conference call on its $2 billion and growing “hedge” losses and related first quarter earning release was the way the heretofore loud and proud bank was revealed to have feet of clay on the risk management front.
Read more...What Can Americans Learn from the Eurocrisis
At the risk of looking like NC has become the “all Michael Hudson, all the time” channel, we’re featuring his latest talk with Real News Network. He discusses how and why candidates make promises to ordinary people that they promptly repudiate when they assume office.
Read more...Mirable Dictu! Moody’s to Adjust Bank Ratings Downward for Regulatory Arbitrage
It’s hard to imagine anyone will take tough-sounding stances by ratings agencies seriously, but Moody’s, in a chat with the Financial Times, says it has (finally) taken notice of how banks play games with regulatory capital requirements.
Read more...Jamie Dimon Misrepresented “London Whale” Risks, Admits to $2+ Billion Loss Plus Risk Management Black Eye
As readers likely know by now, Jamie Dimon hastily arranged an after hours conference call today, in which he admitted to $2 billion in losses in the last six weeks from a trade by the “London Whale”, Bruno Michel Iksil in the bank’s Chief Investment Office, with as much as another potential $1 billion in losses in the offing.
Read more...Michael Hudson on Greenspan’s Hackery
This is a short clip and I am sure you’ll enjoy it.
Read more...Quelle Surprise! Fed Defends Incompetent Bank Management Against Investors
Reader Hecht pointed out a new piece by Steven Davidoff at the New York Times’ Dealbook, illustrating the lengths to which the Fed will go to defend incumbent bank managements.
Read more...The Bankruptcy “Reforms” of 2005: Creation of a New Debtor’s Prison?
An article by law professor Linda Coco, “Debtor’s Prison in the Neoliberal State: ‘Debtfare’ and the Cultural Logics of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005,” (hat tip Michael Hudson) is a an informative, if disheartening, overview of the significance of the bankruptcy law reforms implemented in 2005.
One might cynically observe that after 25 years of making it easier for consumers to borrow and encouraging them to load up, banks realized that they might have too much of a good thing and realized they needed to improve their ability to extract payments from the credit junkies they had created.
Read more...More on Frontline’s Astonishing Whitewash of the Crisis
As readers may know, a recent post, “Frontline’s Astonishing Whitewash of the Crisis,”discussed the first half of the Frontline series, “Money, Power & Wall Street.” Producers Mike Wiser and Martin Smith sent a letter taking issue with this review, and I made an exception to my usual practice and posted their missive.
The major dispute is over whether their series lets the financial services industry off too lightly.
Read more...Bill Black: New York Times Reporters Need to Read Krugman’s Columns
strong>Bill Black, the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One and an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Cross posted from New Economic Perspectives.
To know the Washington Consensus as a regular citizen is to hate the Consensus.
Read more...Wolf Richter: Blowback from Sarkozy’s Election Finance Shenanigans
Europe greeted with excitement—or exasperation—the arrival of the “President of Growth,” François Hollande. And outgoing President Nicolas Sarkozy confirmed that he’d quit politics. He complained about journalists dogging him. “I’m spied on,” he said (ironically). “I hope they will leave me alone.” But that’s precisely what they won’t do because, on May 15, he’ll lose his immunity that has protected him against a ton of malodorous allegations.
Read more...Frontline Takes Issue With Our Critique of Its “Money, Power & Wall Street” Shows
I received this e-mail last week. I will issue my rebuttal Tuesday during the day. Check back in then!
Read more...Economists, Liquidity Mongers and the Banker Assault on Financial Reform
This has been a bad stretch for advocates of financial reform – and therefore for the economy as a whole. One after the other, new financial regulations contained in the Dodd-Frank law are being gutted or delayed by regulators and Congress, while the bankers – escorted by a phalanx of paid economists, lawyers and lobbyists – are squealing “wee, wee, wee” all the way home.
Read more...Exclusive: How Obama’s Early Career Success Was Built on Fronting for Chicago Real Estate and Finance
Barack Obama remains an icon to many on what passes for the left in America despite incontrovertible evidence that he does not represent their interests. There are many contributing factors, including his considerable skills as a speaker and his programmatic effort to neuter liberal critics by getting their funding cut.
A central component of the seemingly impenetrable Obama mythology is his personal history: a black man, son of a broken home, who nevertheless got on the fast track to financial success by becoming editor of the Harvard Law Review, but turned instead to working with and later representing a particularly disadvantaged community, the South Side of Chicago.
Even so, this story does not quite add up.
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