The summary of this video (hat tip reader Barbara): The Federal Reserve is one of the most powerful and secretive institutions in Washington, long considered beyond the reach of lawmakers. But now, as details emerge of how the Fed secretly doled out more than a trillion dollars during the financial crisis, a rare bipartisan movement […]
Read more...Lordie, the theater is beginning to look like a Punch and Judy show, where everything is staged and no one gets hurt. Joe Nocera has a not-too bad piece on the latest comedy of errors, except he takes the Adminstration’s PR way too seriously: Remember that infamous meeting last October at the Treasury Department, the […]
Read more...The Washington Post has a pretty bizarre story up tonight. The Administration is thinking about releasing TARP funds as loans to small businesses. Stress the thinking part. As in big-time thinking. As in long way from action. Which begs the question as to why this is a news story. Since I am of the view […]
Read more...This from an attentive (and well known) investor. I’d provide a link except the press release is not yet posted on Dodd’s website United States Congress For Immediate Release July 10, 2009 Contact: Kirstin Brost/Justine Sessions, Dodd, 202-224-7391 Steve Adamske, Frank, 202-225-7141 Dodd, Frank Ask Regulators to Address 2nd Mortgages Valuation Problems that Discourage Loan […]
Read more...Another day, another banking industry subsidy. From MarketWatch (hat tip reader Marshall): A panel that oversees a $700 billion bank bailout package said Friday that financial institutions buying out warrants they gave the government in exchange for capital injections are now buying back those stakes at well below their fair value. The Congressional Oversight Panel, […]
Read more...Submitted by Edward Harrison of Credit Writedowns. Laura Tyson, an advisor to President Barack Obama, said in a speech to day in the lead up to the –8 conference that the ground work for a potential second stimulus bill must be laid now. To be sure, the G-8 leaders are expected to recommend continued policy […]
Read more...Martin Wolf is pessimistic about the whether the financial system can be reformed, but nevertheless offers some toughminded suggestions. Oddly, he seems to see the big obstacles not as political, but as practical, that markets are too big and interconnected, and sees that as an intractable problem. I agree that it will almost certainly not […]
Read more...Americans on average are more liberal than sterotypes about US attitudes would suggest. So why do most Americans, and more important their representatives, act as if the country is conservative-leaning? The cynical take is the most persuasive: while the numbers may be skewed to the left, the money is weighted to the right. With TV […]
Read more...The optimists that have long assumed that the dollar will continue to reign supreme due to lack of alternatives have just have their sanguine views challenged as China threw down the gauntlet on coming up with an alternative, non-country-specific, reserve currency. The US in fact had this option at the time of Bretton Woods and […]
Read more...Nothin’ like having Uncle Sam cut an overly friendly deal. Plenty of folks, including yours truly, were skeptical of Treasury’s claim, made often with a straight face. that the government was exercising care on who got TARP funding (as in it was not just handing out dough willy-nilly, but did have an eye to getting […]
Read more...What amounted to a statement of principles and a very few stakes in the ground from Timothy Geithner on financial reform got a largely hostile reaction from Congress (see Ed Harrison here and here for further detail). The main criticism was that the notion of making the Fed the uber stability regulator/financial system overseer (officially, […]
Read more...Frankly, it is hard to know what to make of the ongoing noise form China regarding the dollar. The most sensible explanation is that China is playing to a domestic audience. China, after all, purchased dollar assets as a integral part of its development strategy. Independent of the fate of the dollar, successful developing economies […]
Read more...Submitted by DoctoRx, who comments on the economic and financial scenes at EconBlog Review: In thinking about Animal Spirits, I am reminded of Spencer Tracy’s comment about Katharine Hepburn in Pat and Mike: “Not much meat on her, but what’s there is cherce.” There’s not much meat on the bones of Animal Spirits, and what’s […]
Read more...Joe Nocera of the New York Times has a good piece today on the Obama executive pay proposals, such that they are. While I have sometimes been hard on Nocera for taking positions that I have found to be a bit too forgiving to the financial services industry, today he gave an articulate rendition of […]
Read more...The Financial Times reports that the House Oversight committee wants to have a little chat with the Fed over the widespread reports that it muscled BofA more than a tad to complete its acquisition of Merrill after the Charlotte bank learned that the securities firm had posted large losses in December and tried to exit […]
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