It turns out some businesses are thriving in the downturn, with lobbyists a prime example. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, lobbyist revenues increased 5% in 2009 versus 2008. As The Hill noted (hat tip DoctoRx): Lobbyists have said business for them managed to remain upbeat throughout 2009 despite the poor economy because of […]
Read more...Can someone shut these banking industry narcissists up? The one and only time I met Steve Schwarzman was in 1986, when he and Pete Peterson had just started the Blackstone Group. I was a manager (meaning a mid level working oar) at McKinsey. We had teed up a deal and were assisting our foreign client […]
Read more...The top story at the Financial Times at this hour, “‘Volcker rule’ gives Goldman stark choice,” is a accurate report of Paul Volcker’s latest remarks, but gives a wildly misleading impression of the “choice” facing Goldman: Goldman Sachs and other banks should give up their bank status if they want to avoid the ban on […]
Read more...I’m late to this, as everyone with an operating brain cell, starting with Simon Johnson to Paul Krugman is duly horrified by the remarks that Obama made in a Bloomberg interview, published this AM: President Barack Obama said he doesn’t “begrudge” the $17 million bonus awarded to JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie […]
Read more...Upon occasion, I’ve asked readers to contact their Senators or Representatives about pending legislation. Many of you have taken action, even though that takes a bit of effort (actually composing and making the call or e-mail). Some readers have also commented, cynically, “Why bother, Congress will do what it corporate constituents want to happen.” Today’s […]
Read more...On the one hand, as we noted in an earlier post, EU president Herman Van Rompuy has made no bones about his view that the EU needs to have more clout in economic affairs. Per the Telegraph: Herman Van Rompuy, the EU’s new president, has submitted a text calling for the creation of an “economic […]
Read more...Readers may know that one point of contention in the worries about Greece’s deficits is that it had hidden the fact that it violated Maastricht rule that fine eurozone countries whose fiscal deficits exceed 3% of GDP. How was this subterfuge achieved? While the Greek government engaged in some bogus accounting on its own, it […]
Read more...Regulators have been making a concerted push for banks to hold more equity as a protection against loss and overly-optimistic valuation of trading assets. But the head of the Bank of International Settlements, Jamie Caruna, argued at a secret (not) central bankers’ conference in Sydney that banks also need to carry more in the way […]
Read more...We remarked last week that the FDIC had put forward a proposal for fixing the securitization market. To be a bit more precise, it was the FDIC’s plan, put forward for public comment, of the rules it wanted to have in place for banks to get “safe harbor”, meaning off balance sheet treatment, for their […]
Read more...By Yves Smith and Tom Adams, an attorney and former monoline executive Gretchen Morgenson has a lengthy article tonight at the New York Times, “Testy Conflict With Goldman Helped Push A.I.G. to Edge.” While it provides some useful new tidbits, it peculiarly focuses on an aspect of Goldman’s dealings with AIG that, particularly with the […]
Read more...On the one hand, debating the merits of the Volcker Rule may seem a tad academic, given the rousing opposition it is encountering from Congress (and you have to love the world of politics: the biggest obstacle is, basically, “We sorta have a deal, you can’t retrade it!” Funny how banks and AIG get to […]
Read more...Bloomberg has a useful but oddly-framed article up tonight: “Bank of America E-Mails Show Lehman Was Buy Target.” The story comes out of investigation by New York state attorney general Andrew Cuomo in Bank of America’s failure to disclose the deterioration in Merrill’s condition prior to the shareholder vote on the deal, but the bits […]
Read more...By Richard Alford, a former economist at the New York Fed. Since then, he has worked in the financial industry as a trading floor economist and strategist on both the sell side and the buy side. There was a long period of time during which I believed that Mr. Bernanke should have resigned the Chairmanship […]
Read more...One of the impediments to getting to the bottom of the financial crisis is some of the most destructive behavior involved complex instruments like collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps. It isn’t simply that these “innovations” had terms and features that differ from familiar investments like stocks and bonds, but the way those instruments […]
Read more...By Joshua Rosner, a managing director of an independent financial services research firm who writes for New Deal 2.0 In Geithner’s AIG testimony before the House Oversight Committee, the Secretary again tried to sell the notion that ‘if we didn’t act then, millions more would have lost their jobs and thousands of factories would have […]
Read more...