By Marshall Auerback, a hedge fund manager and portfolio strategist who writes for New Deal 2.0. Despite a blame-a-thon on Ireleand, Germans banks are really at the core of the eurozone catastrophe. Much ink has been spilled in the press over the Irish problem and the laxity of the country’s southern Mediterranean counterparts in contrast […]
Read more...On the one hand, I’m being proven somewhat wrong in my dismissive views of the impact of Dodd-Frank. Credit default swaps, a product I’ve viewed as essential to rein in (it’s a fee machine for Wall Street that has produced clear harm and has almost no socially productive uses) have fallen markedly in volume prior […]
Read more...By Richard Alford, a former economist at the New York Fed. Since then, he has worked in the financial industry as a trading floor economist and strategist on both the sell side and the buy side. The YouTube video “Quantitative Easing Explained” has surpassed 2.9 million views. The video is both entertaining and unremittingly critical […]
Read more...From the look of it, the Irish bailout is taking another chunk of another one of FT Alphaville stalwart Neil Hume’s weekends. From Peston European finance ministers are struggling to reach agreement on the interest rate to be paid by Ireland for the €85bn of rescue finance it is set to receive from the EU […]
Read more...Time to count up the systemic implications of the Irish crisis, following up on some of today’s links and other news. First, the usual contagion to Portugal and Spain is now in full swing, propelled by another barrage of bumbling Euroannouncements: Weber announced that if necessary, the EU would increase the ceiling of the EFSF […]
Read more...Francine McKenna is shocked that investigations in the UK have revealed that major auditors were told to make wobbly banks look healthier than they were. Specifically, they issue “going concern” opinions because they were told the banks would be backstopped. One can only assume the accountants were brought in the loop with the aim of […]
Read more...Bloomberg provided a useful update on the 50 state attorney generals’ investigation into mortgage abuses. One key development is that the AGs are treating investors as parties whose interests need to be considered. This appears to be at odds with the approach taken by Federal regulators, who are devising and implementing exams of various sorts […]
Read more...This story illustrates how far some companies are willing to go to preserve their bottom lines and assert their right to operate in an unfettered manner, even when that includes breaking the law and violating contracts. Huffington Post, via its daily political newsletter Huffington Post Hill, does some additional reporting on the very peculiar case […]
Read more...No formal announcement yet, but some presumably well-sourced rumours about the size of the Irish bailout (EUR 85Bn), and the rate (7%, via the redoubtable Twitterer on all matters Irish @LorcanRK). While we await the budget statement, there are reasons to suspect, or hope, that the bailout, like Godot, will never come, because it’s failing […]
Read more...Felix Salmon reports on a conversation with departing assistant Treasury Secretary Michael Barr on newly-commenced reviews of the practices of bank servicers. Barr’s patter might sound convincing to the uninformed. An “11-agency, 8-week review of servicer practices, with hundreds of investigators crawling all over the banks”! Promises to hold miscreants accountable! Banks required to fix […]
Read more...Lisa Epstein of Foreclosure Hamlet sent an eye-opening letter from Christopher Meister, who ran for the sheriff of Lee County, Florida as an independent and lost. As much as I’ve read plenty of reports of dubious judicial behavior in Florida, I still find myself appalled when new stories crop up. The Meister letter provides specific […]
Read more...Some readers may have been unhappy with my failure to comment on a Washington Post article late last week about a push by the mortgage registry service, MERS, to “legalize” its activities. Even though the article indicates that dollars are being thrown at lobbyists to sell the MERS version of reality in DC, their approach […]
Read more...The media has been so preoccupied with acute symptoms of the debt crisis – sliding home prices, foreclosure abuses, ongoing Euromarket bank/sovereign debt stress, ongoing battles over financial regulation implementation, unhappiness over the Fed’s QE2 – that lingering problems are not getting the attention they deserve. High on the list is the how the weak […]
Read more...I’ve taken a particular interest in GMAC because in the one consumer foreclosure case I ‘ve attended, back in May, I had the dubious pleasure of seeing a GMAC employee and an attorney for the local foreclosure mill, who was also put on the stand, perjure themselves. And this isn’t my interpretation; documentary evidence was […]
Read more...Some geographical and economic clarifications from politicians, officials and commentators: 1. Spain is not Greece – Elena Salgado, Spanish Finance Minister, ~February, 2010. 2. Portugal is not Greece – The Economist, 22nd April, 2010. 3. Greece is not Ireland – George Papaconstantinou, Greek Finance Minister, 8th November 2010. 4. Spain is neither Ireland nor Portugal […]
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