I know cynicism-hardened Naked Capitalism readers will expect the answer to the question in the headline to be “no”. But based on a summary of the filing at Bloomberg (and having conferred with lawyers on this beat), the answer looks more like “possibly yes”.
Read more...Occupy the SEC has released one of its characteristically well-though-out and documented letters, in the form of questions it would like to see raised during the Senate hearings on the nomination of Mary Jo White to head the SEC.
Read more...The more people look at the abruptly-arranged settlement of the OCC/Fed foreclosure reviews, the more they realize something does not smell right.
Read more...Yves here. Remind me never to get on Bill Black’s bad side.
Read more...Aiee! CNS News found this tidbit (hat tip furzy mouse), contained in IRS final regulations published on January 31. Now admittedly these are examples for the purposes of illustrating how to make various calculations under the new regulations, but the assumptions are pretty clear.
Read more...By Bill Black, the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One and an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
It’s early, but Salon has published on January 30, 2013 either the funniest or saddest column of the year to date: “Are Banks Too Big To Prosecute?”
Read more...A new paper by Mark Weisbrot and Helene Jorgensen of CEPR have managed to unearth a dirty little secret: the IMF doesn’t just prescribe broadly similar policies in its Article IV consultations, it looks like its hands out the same medicine. We’ve used the metaphor of breaking countries on the rack, but cutting them to fit a Procrustean bed might be more apt.
Read more...A major intellectual blind spot in academia and among policy makers is the belief that making markets more liquid is always and ever a good thing.
Read more...By Marcy Wheeler. Cross posted from emptywheel
Remarkably, on the same day two Senators (one of them named in the article) reminded Eric Holder that Lanny Breuer said this….
Read more...I think I and prosecutors around the country, being responsible, should speak to regulators, should speak to experts, because if I bring a case against institution, and as a result of bringing that case, there’s some huge economic effect — if it creates a ripple effect so that suddenly, counterparties and other financial institutions or other companies that had nothing to do with this are affected badly — it’s a factor we need to know and understand.
In this post in our Bank of America foreclosure review series, whistleblowers describe how the bank and its independent consultant Promontory Financial Group designed and managed the tests so as to minimize findings of harm to borrowers.
Read more...This post is the second half of Part III in our Bank of America foreclosure review whistleblower series. Part III focuses on how the confusion and high cost of the foreclosure reviews weren’t simply the result of overly ambitious targets and poor design, oversight, and implementation of the reviews. These reviews never could have been done properly due to significant gaps and inaccuracies in the borrower records at Bank of America. That meant the only possible course of action was a cover-up.
Read more...Past whistleblower leaks from Bank of America and other reviews have pointed out how frequent changes to the review process, both from the OCC and from the independent reviewers, made the process disorderly. This confusion is likely to serve as a convenient excuse for why the costs of the reviews exploded, which was one of the two major rationales offered for shutting them down.
At Bank of America, the disorderliness of the project is only part of the story. Focusing on that aspect serves to exculpate OCC, the bank and Promontory. The dirty secret of these reviews is they could never have been done properly.
Read more...By Nathan Tankus, a student and research assistant at the University of Ottawa. You can follow him on Twitter at @NathanTankus
I can’t emphasize enough how satisfying it is to see Timothy Geithner finally leave government. True, it would have been more enjoyable to see him leave in handcuffs, but I take my satisfaction where I can get it.
Read more...By Delusional Economics, who is determined to cleanse the daily flow of vested interests propaganda to produce a balanced counterpoint. Cross posted from MacroBusiness.
I’m slowly working my way through the material that’s coming out of World Economic Forum in Davos. I tend not to take too much attention of what is said at this particular conference as, in my opinion, it tends to be full of self-serving tripe in the most part.
I did, however, notice a small interview with Icelandic President, Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, which was quite interesting.
Read more...A ruling by the Washington, DC federal appeals court in Noel Canning v. NLRB pretty much ends the ability of presidents to make recess appointments, a measure that has been used since 1867. The suit successfully challenged a NLRB rulemaking on the grounds that three of the five directors were recess appointments which meant the NLRB lacked a quorum to give it authority to act.
Read more...