Category Archives: Banking industry

Draghi Departs the Solar System

By Delusional Economics, who is horrified at the state of economic commentary in Australia and is determined to cleanse the daily flow of vested interests propaganda to produce a balanced counterpoint. Cross posted from MacroBusiness.

Last night the ECB met in Barcelona and once again held on rates. Mario Draghi opening statement is below. As I have spoken about many times previously I considers Mario Draghi’s statement about what is happening in Europe to be a view from some other planet.

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Yet Another Mortgage Settlement Gimmie: Conflicting Servicing Standards Play into Hands of Banks

It’s bad enough that the overhyped mortgage settlement was a big victory for the banks at the expense of homeowners and the rule of law. It let servicers out of considerable liability at very low real cost, and even that is offset by the transfer from pension funds and savers to the banks by letting them write down securitized first loans without wiping out bank owned second liens that sit behind them.

But we now learn there are other gimmies that appear to have resulted from negotiating incompetence.

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Big Employers Extorting States, Pocketing Employee Income Tax Withholding

Wonder why states are broke? It isn’t just the global financial crisis induced knock-on effects of a plunge in tax receipts and a rise in social safety net payments. Nor is it just pension fund time bombs (note that despite the press hysteria, the problem is unmanageable only in a comparatively small number of states, with New Jersey way out in front, thanks to 15 years of the state stealing from the workers’ kitty, plus a decision to take big risk at exactly the wrong moment, in 2007, which resulted in large losses). A significant unrecognized culprit is companies managing to divert tax revenue from stressed states to their coffers.

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Morgan Sandquist: Finance in Denial – Conclusion

This is the last part in a four-part essay by Morgan Sandquist, a member of the Occupy Wall Street Alternative Banking Group. The previous post are In Denial, The Addiction, and An Intervention. Cross posted from mathbabe

Still sitting in our breakfast nook, with the banking industry squinting grumpily back at us through the glare of the morning sun on the perfectly polished granite table top, we can sit back, rest our hands on the table, and rather than shouting what it expects to hear, playing our part in the script of codependency, we can speak, without pleading or rancor, the truths that are beyond the script.

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Satyajit Das: The European Debt Crisis Redux

By Satyajit Das, derivatives expert and the author of Extreme Money: The Masters of the Universe and the Cult of Risk Traders, Guns & Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives – Revised Edition (2006 and 2010). Jointly posted with Roubini Global Economics

The half-life of solutions to Europe’s debt problem is getting ever shorter.

Recent hopes have relied on the ostensible success of the European Central Bank’s (“ECB”) LTRO – Long Term Refinancing Operation, more appropriately termed the Lourdes Treatment and Resuscitation Option.

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Morgan Sandquist: Finance in Denial – An Intervention

This is the third part in a four-part essay by Morgan Sandquist, a member of the Occupy Wall Street Alternative Banking Group. The previous post are In Denial and The Addiction. Cross posted from mathbabe

What are we to do with our banking industry, sitting there at the kitchen table in its underwear, drumming on the table with one hand and scratching its increasingly coarse chin with the other in an impossibly syncopated rhythm, letting fly a dizzying stream of assurances, justifications, and accusations, and generally spoiling for a fight that can only be avoided by complete and enthusiastic agreement with a narrative that can be very difficult to follow, let alone make sense of?

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