It’s bad enough to see long suffering homeowners take it once again in the chin, thanks to the way the bank regulators prostrate themselves before their supposed charges. It adds insult to injury to see this type of ritualized sellout yet again presented as a boon for consumers.
The latest case study is the $8.5 billion foreclosure fraud settlement announced today.
Read more...At the instigation of reader Doug, I’m shedding light on a remarkably flattering assessment of the Department of Justice, as revealed by a clearly planted story at the Law.com blog. It’s not so much that this article (as offensive as it is) important in and of itself, but it serves to illustrate the phenomenon that folks at te M&A boutique Lazard (when it was the top expert in CEO psychopathy) called “believing your own PR”. This sort of thinking bears examining because it is widespread in both Corporate America and within the Beltway.
Read more...Police are (still) poised to press charges against several HBOS bankers and consultants after a two-year investigation into large-scale fraud, money laundering and corruption involving the Edinburgh-based bank.
Read more...Matt Stoller is a fellow at the Roosevent institute. You can follow him at http://www.twitter.com/matthewstoller.
Throughout much of the United States, cell phone service is terrible, just like broadband and banking services. This is a result of a lack of competition and increasingly poor regulatory policies.
Read more...An SEC action that appears likely to do considerable harm to companies and individuals in the US and abroad appears to have gone completely unnoticed, save for an important piece in The New Republic by Linda Khan.
Read more...Now it is narrowly true that the filing of a criminal suit by US prosecutors did force the closure of a bank. But as one might suspect, there is vastly less here than meets the eye. And that isn’t simply because the institution in question was a Swiss bank I am pretty certain you never heard of.
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’ve commented numerous times over the the last 3 years that I considered the IMF’s position on Europe dangerously misguided as I felt it was based more on ideology than evidential analysis (see more here). The results have been so bad that the IMF is being forced to admit to the errors of its ways.
Read more...You simply must read this post if you care at all about the rule of law or can stand to see the gory mechanisms by which “regulation” has now become a fig leaf for criminal corporate conduct.
Read more...After too many years to count of regulatory failure and limp-wristed reforms, it’s hard to be surprised. Nevertheless, I hope to convince you that a yet another mortgage settlement, leaked on New Year’s Eve when hopefully no one would notice, achieves the difficult task of reaching a new level of dereliction of duty.
Read more...My, my, SEC head of enforcement Robert Khuzami has revealed himself to be both remarkably thin skinned and not very good at making a case for himself.
Read more...Matt Stoller is a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. He can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/matthewstoller
Earlier this year, Obama Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski proposed relaxing media ownership rules to allow Rupert Murdoch to buy the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune. It’s not something you’ll see discussed much, because Republicans like the fact that Murdoch is going to get more power, while Democrats don’t want to admit that Obama is helping the person framed as their arch-nemesis. This is part of a larger pattern – media consolidation is one of the many structural problems that Obama promised to deal with. And indeed, this is the real arena where the battle over free speech is being fought. Corporate control over our communications infrastructure is the free speech question of our time.
Read more...The Obama Administration is planning to launch yet another mortgage refi program, this one targeting subprime borrowers who are current on their loans but underwater, extending the government support of the mortgage market to yet another borrower group.
Read more...By Wolf Richter, San Francisco based executive, entrepreneur, start up specialist, and author, with extensive international work experience. Cross posted from Testosterone Pit.
On Friday before Christmas when nobody was paying attention, when people were elbowing their way through department stores or heading out for vacation, the European Commission issued its report on bank bailouts in the European Union—a dry document with mind-boggling numbers that left out the most important fact.
Read more...After the media uproar about HSBC’s deep involvement in the dirtiest sort of money-laundering, UBS’s mere Libor-fixing might look a tad pale. But the notice by the FSA clearly states that it regarded UBS’s conduct as far worse than that of Barclays, where the chairman, CEO, and president all stepped down.
Read more...Our Treasury Secretary, also known as the Bailouter in Chief and “Foamy,” has a default explanation for why ordinary citizens must bend over every time banking interests are threatened. The more formal statement of this policy is the Geithner Doctrine, which is “nothing must be done that will destablize the banking system.” However, Geithner also subscribes to the Humpty Dumpty School of Language, in which words mean what he chooses them to mean, nothing more or less. So “destabilize” means “hurts the profits or reputation of” and “banking system” means “any bank that is pretty big and/or well connected”.
Read more...