Oooh, this is turning out to be fun. Judge Jed Rakoff is not putting up with Wall Street business as usual (no joke, that was part of the defense offered by Bank of America for its failure to disclose the amount of Merrill bonus payments in the merger proxy sent to shareholders to approve the […]
Read more...By George Washington of Washington’s Blog. Top economists and financial experts believe that the economy cannot recover unless the big, insolvent banks are broken up in an orderly fashion. Even the Bank of International Settlements – the “Central Banks’ Central Bank” – has slammed too big to fail. As summarized by the Financial Times: The […]
Read more...There is a not bad piece at the New York Times on the fates of various ex-Lehman employees a year after the collapse. The story vividly if unwittingly illustrates the old saying that fish rot from the head. The people profiled were all involved in mortgage securitization, either directly or indirectly. Most seem unable to […]
Read more...By DoctoRx, who writes at EconBlog Review: In The Fed, the veteran journalist Martin Mayer has written a real-time prequel of the Great Financial Crisis (“GFC”) of the past two years. People may find it a good read or reread because historians have a point of view. If Mayer were a cheerleader for Alan Greenspan’s […]
Read more...Just as Larry Summers is pushing the message that the crisis is over and Team Obama deserves credit, IMF managing director Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn is telling the media the reverse, that the crisis is far from over. From Reuters: “The global economic crisis will continue, even if Germany and France had some good figures in […]
Read more...By George Washington of Washington’s Blog. The following top economists and financial experts believe that the economy cannot recover unless the big, insolvent banks are broken up in an orderly fashion: Nobel prize-winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz Nobel prize-winning economist, Ed Prescott Dean and professor of finance and economics at Columbia Business School, and chairman of […]
Read more...The Financial Times tonight reports that Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein made “startling” remarks in Germany, for instance, that a lot of banking activity is rather thin on redeeming social value. Oh, and he admitted bankers might be paid too much, too. Gee, with revelations like that, what might he to ‘fess up to next? That […]
Read more...Even though there has been an increasing level of revolutionary saber-rattling in comments, it’s hard to see what the outlet for the anger against the banking industry will be. The brief surge of letter-writing, e-mails, and calls to Congressmen to forestall the TARP proved useless. But Americans don’t go to the barricades or do general […]
Read more...This blog normally steers clear of the consumer finance space, except when it is amusing or has macroeconomic effects. But once in a while I cannot contain myself. Why does anyone have a debit card? I am deadly serious about this question. Not long ago, I switched banks, going from one end of the spectrum […]
Read more...While the G-20 agreement to move forward with a coordinated approach to bank capital rules and employee incentive payments is progress, it is important to recognize that what took place was effectively an apple pie and motherhood statement. The one stake in the ground was the commitment to make Tier 1 Capital a key metric. […]
Read more...Earlier this week, on the eve of a G-20 meeting, some European ministers were not only threatening to implement tough restrictions on the financial services industry, but they also asserted that the G20 was largely in alignment. That did not seem credible, particularly given the US propensity to talk tough and do very little on […]
Read more...The New York Times has a story tonight, “Judges’ Frustration Grows With Mortgage Servicers,” which narrowly speaking, is not bad, but illustrates a frustrating propensity of the budget and time constrained MSM to fail to dig into the meaty issues behind its articles. The piece is yet another sighting in the Servicers Behaving Badly saga. […]
Read more...Perhaps I place too much emphasis on turn of phrase. However, the fact that the EU officialdom is starting to use feral imagery in describing the posture they intend to take relative to the financial services industry says they have a keen appreciation of what they are up against. The battle lines are being drawn […]
Read more...Lord Turner, the head of the UK’s Financial Services Authority, is my new hero. He is willing to tell banks to do things that are in the public’s best interest but are singularly unpleasant and costly to the financiers. The fact that what is good for the banksters is increasingly at odds with what is […]
Read more...Clearly, the spin is in. As a post earlier today discusses, the Financial Times is running a story that claims that the Fed made money on its rescue programs, then slips in all the tidbits in the body of the article to let discerning readers know that the reporter understands that the analysis is utter […]
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