Well, as much as Dodd was not as tough on banks as many would like, his lame duck status is turning Potemkin reforms into an utter joke. The element of the proposed consumer financial protection agency that would have had a real impact on the predatory practices was the requirement to offer plain vanilla products. […]
Read more...The opening hearings of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission was somewhat upstaged by the tragedy in Haiti, but nevertheless compelled Wall Street chieftans to put in an appearance, which is more than President Obama has been able to d. And while Angelides himself was combative and slapped Lloyd Blankfein around a bit (pretty much every […]
Read more...While I am not normally on the UN beat, I guess I sorta am on the corruption beat (actually, truth be told, my real mission is to revive critical thinking, a skill that has atrophied badly in America). I received an e-mail from a former UN staffer highlighting that, as typically is the case, when […]
Read more...Ah, the machinations that Faustian bargains produce! The Obama Administration is now caught in its own machinations and is having to backpedal fast and hard from its bankster friendly posture, or at least have the public believe it is executing that maneuver. While I cannot fathom the logic, Team Obama clearly decided to throw in […]
Read more...The headline above would normally be seen as “dog bites man” save for the fact that during the health reform debate, the insurers went to considerable lengths to profess they really, really had changed their ways and were now going to be good corporate citizens. But it was pretty clear that this change of heart […]
Read more...With its talk of new taxes on banks, is Team Obama reverting to its now well established pattern of crony capitalist giveaways with the occasional phony populist reform as an increasingly ineffective disguise? The extraordinarily unenthusiastic, perhaps inept by design, discussion of its plans to tax banks in some yet undetermined manner certainly says so. […]
Read more...William Black is a former senior bank regulator, now associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri – Kansas City (UMKC), who writes for New Deal 2.0. The first decade of this century proved how essential effective regulators are to prevent economic catastrophe and epidemics of fraud. The most severe failure was […]
Read more...This discussion focuses on the problem presented by too big to fail institutions and suggests remedies. Enjoy!
Read more...Bankers ’round the world howled when the UK imposed a one-time 50% bonus supertax. The levy was meant as a shot across the bow, to warn the firms that were posting generous earnings in large measure thanks to government assistance (particularly super low interest rates) to act sensibly. The officialdom’s message was that financial firms […]
Read more...Needless to say, it isn’t often that a retired, well respected general disputes official policy. But war leader and “pillar of the defence establishment” Brigadier-General Uzi Eilam has gone public with his views that Iran is a very long way from having nuclear weapons capability. Eilam contends that the official view is “hysterical” and attributes […]
Read more...Wow, has someone declared “Forced Out CEO Tries to Salvage His Reputation Month” when I wasn’t paying attention? Or was I just not on the distribution list? Last week, we had Sandy Weill telling us how the Frankenstein of the Citigroup he created was really a fine business; the only mistake he made was pushing […]
Read more...By L. Randall Wray, Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, Research Director with the Center for Full Employment and Price Stability and Senior Research Scholar at The Levy Economics Institute, who writes for New Deal 2.0. There is a growing consensus that it is time for President Obama to fire Treasury Secretary […]
Read more...By Bruce Krasting, a foreign exchange and derivatives veteran who comments regularly on the financial scene. In my piece “What’s in Store for 2010” my number one prediction was: -Tim Geithner will resign as Treasury Secretary. Sheila Bair will replace him. The odds of getting any of these types of predictions correct are probably 20 […]
Read more...In what is becoming a typical pattern for the Obama administration, right wing opponents of some of his initiatives (like reappointing Bernanke) are finding common cause with progressives, an alliance that seemed unthinkable a mere year ago. While the left is generally behind the health care reform bill, support is far from universal. And a […]
Read more...Dear readers, as much as the fact set in the headline sounds bad, we need to parse things a bit to calibrate properly. IMHO, the fact that the Fed used an attorney that also served Goldman is symptomatic of how concentrated the high end of finance has become and how incestuous all the relationships are […]
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