The Wall Street Journal reports that the pay czar, Kenneth Feinberg, is going to cut executive comp at 7 TARP recipients for the 25 most highly paid employees. Does this really mean anything? The press will noise it up as significant (and some outlets will no doubt finger wag at this “interference”) but the short […]
Read more...By George Washington of Washington’s Blog. In 2000, America was described as the sole remaining superpower – or even the world’s “hyperpower”. Now we’re in real trouble (at the very least, you have to admit that we’re losing power and wealth in comparison with China). How did it happen so fast? As everyone knows, the […]
Read more...Paul Volcker wants to roll the clock back and restore Glass Steagall, the 1933 rule that separated commercial banking from investment banking, but Team Obama is politely ignoring him. Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England, is giving a more strident version of the same message, calling on the biggest financial firms to […]
Read more...By John Bougearel, Director of Futures and Equity Research at Structural Logic. The core of America is the middle class. And Harvard Law Professor and chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel COP ( the COP is to oversee TARP, the Troubled Assets Relief Program) Elizabeth Warren tells us that the core of America is being […]
Read more...Those who recall the early Clinton years may see some parallels to today, albeit in a watered-down form now. Clinton came into office, as political scientist/economist Tom Ferguson put it, “chanting one word as a mantra: ‘change.” He then appointed: an economic team that looked like Wall Street, a foreign policy team that resembled Jimmy […]
Read more...One of the horrorshows that has been moving along in the background is the disaster of the funding of a sewer project in Birmingham, Alabama, which looks pretty likely to produce the biggest municipal bankruptcy since Orange County back in the mid 1990s. Orange County did have one Robert Citron to blame for its woes. […]
Read more...Paul Krugman is back to his old form on the financial services beat, now that the cracks in the Paulson/Geithner/Bernanke “give the banks what they want now, in size, worry about cleanup later” strategy is proving to have been the wrong way to go. My big beef is that he didn’t go far enough and […]
Read more...Reader and life-long Chicago resident John Bougearel asked me to reissue a post encouraging readers to participate in peaceful demonstrations during the American Bankers Association annual meeting in Chicago October 25-27. The sessions are organized by a coalition of community, consumer and labor organizations and are called “Showdown in Chicago“. You can find more details […]
Read more...Two good segments from an interview with Elizabeth Warren of the Congressional Oversight Panel (hat tip reader Scott) at Tech Ticker: Warren discusses how banks are winning, hands down, in getting the rules they want: Watch the video here. Key quote from her discussion of bonuses: “I do not understand how financial institutions could think […]
Read more...I’m of two minds about taking up this theme, since stating what ought to be obvious but is nevertheless unpleasant and inconvenient is apt to get one branded as lunatic fringe. Access journalism has created what is in many respects a controlled press. And that matters because people are far more suggestible than most of […]
Read more...Ed Harrison has an excellent post over on his Credit Writedowns blog, following up and elaborating on his “Greed is Not Good” post here yesterday. To whet your appetite, here it the beginning of “More on greed, regulation, Lehman and the financial industry“: In one of my latest posts I said “greed is not good.” […]
Read more...By George Washington of Washington’s Blog. William K. Black – professor of economics and law, and the senior regulator during the S & L crisis – says that that the government’s entire strategy now – as during the S&L crisis – is to cover up how bad things are (“the entire strategy is to keep […]
Read more...From Marshall Auerback, a fund manager and investment analyst who writes for New Deal 2.0: As reported by Bloomberg: Goldman Sachs Group Inc., one of the first banks to receive cash injections from the U.S. Treasury during last year’s crisis, doesn’t have an implicit guarantee from the government, Chief Financial Officer David Viniar said today. […]
Read more...I suppose one might classify the logic here as a tactical loss to secure a long-term gain, or in chess terms, sacrificing a pawn to take the queen. So get this: the Republicans (well, to be more accurate, House Minority Leader John Boehner, but we’ll treat him as a good proxy) are really really unhappy […]
Read more...A fair bit of ink has been spilled on the idea that what is often called “innovation” in financial services is a fancy way of saying “extortion racket.” I was cheered when Paul Volcker put the ATM on his list of banking innovations and seemed unable to come up with anything worthwhile since then. Similarly, […]
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