Ah, another Christmas Eve story that (not surprisingly) has gotten little attention. Most of the ire directed against the phony health care reform bill focuses on how it further enriches a fat and undeserving health insurance industry. The media has given less attention to another group that has thrown plenty of lobbying dollars at getting […]
Read more...The Treasury Department, as reported by Bloomberg, and commented on by Rolfe Winkler and Huffington Post (among others) noted, considerably increased its Freddie and Fannie safety net, by removing all limits on the amounts on offer (an increase from a ceiling of $400 billion) and simultaneously allowing the two GSEs to increase their balance sheets […]
Read more...By Edward Harrison of Credit Writedowns. I wrote this in September 2008, re-posted it at Credit Writedowns in March and am re-posting it here because of Yves’ last post. Ifelt that Fannie and Freddie would be used to buy up mortgages, effectively nationalizing the U.S. Mortgage problem (see my last paragraphs). I had seen this […]
Read more...Yves here. This is a cross post from Jane Hamsher at FireDogLake. The fact that Jane and Grover Norquist are on the same page is noteworthy. More important, they call for an investigation (hear, hear!) and below the text of a letter to the Attorney General, provide a link to a petition. If you agree, […]
Read more...Both Obama and the Treasury Department keep talking up the TARP as if it is a money maker for taxpayers, when nothing could be further from the truth. Obama tried this stunt in his anniversary of Lehman speech, and the Treasury continues with the theme, of implying that results for the firms that paid back […]
Read more...By Edward Harrison of Credit Writedowns Yesterday, I indicated I would write a few thematic posts as a look back at some of the more important economic topics that this credit crisis has uncovered. Tying posts together in a theme definitely gives a better holistic view of a the themes than the posts do in […]
Read more...By Thomas Adams, at Paykin Krieg and Adams, LLP, and a former managing director at Ambac and FGIC. Readers may have noticed Janet Tavakoli’s recent article at Huffington Post on Goldman Sachs and AIG. While much of it covers territory that Yves and I already wrote about previously, Ms. Tavakoli stops short of telling the […]
Read more...By Richard Smith, who works for the London consultancy Cubematch, which specialises in risk, collateral and change management The OK The BIS analysis of the 2007-09 banking crisis floats my boat. Here is their headline list of causes: excessive on- and off-balance sheet leverage, diminutive and low quality capital bases, insufficient liquidity buffers at banks. […]
Read more...By Richard Smith, a capital markets and IT consultant There was some really strange stuff going on last week. First, Citi got in a right old tangle. Monday: Citi announce share sale. Pretext: TARP escape. Wednesday: the share sale falls through. Wednesday: it also emerges that the IRS has been quite kind (or at least […]
Read more...An intriguing piece is up at the Washington Post, “Fed’s approach to regulation left banks exposed to crisis,” not simply because it does a good job of finding and analyzing some case studies of the Federal Reserve’s failures at a bank regulator, but also because in the critical opening paragraphs, it launches a full bore […]
Read more...With Obama’s popularity ratings plunging, one would think an obvious step would be for the Administration to move forward with measures that have good PR value and carry little political and budget risk. Yet, as Marshall Auerback noted, the Obama Administration is increasingly all hat, no cattle, making lofty popular sounding promises and not following […]
Read more...So we now have an official demonstration of what we all knew to be true: banksters giving their right to loot their companies top priority, and the greater fool public be damned, with Goldman the most egregious sinner. That firm’s self serving protestations to the contrary, it was a ward of the state, and would […]
Read more...An op-ed in the Sunday New York Times by former investigators and prosecutors Eliot Spitzer, Frank Parnoy, and William Black calls for AIG to put non-privileged e-mails, accounting documents, and financial models on line to allow for an “open source” investigation. The questions they want to examine include: As fraud investigators, we would like to […]
Read more...The UK is providing a lesson the US badly needs to learn, that push comes to shove, regulators hold the whip, and have to be willing to use it when necessary. Given how intransigent the financial services industry has become, the time for discipline has come. Maybe some of them even want it secretly…. In […]
Read more...Edward Harrison here. Here is a video clip of mark Thoma talking about the Federal Reserve Chairman’s chances of re-appointment. He says time is not on Chairman Bernanke’s side. If you saw the Ron Paul video at Credit Writedowns yesterday, you could see what’s happening. I don’t have a strong view, although I believe most […]
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