Heizo Takenaka, who held various posts in Junichiro Koizumi’s cabinet and is now director of the Global Security Research Institute at Keio University, provides a far reaching list of financial reforms. One can quibble with his count (he describes them as 11, but items one and four are two approaches to the same issue) and […]
Read more...In the wake of the Treasury Department foisting equity infusions onto nine banks, not all of which wanted or needed them, the industry has decided to get in front of these initiatives. The latest bright idea. of guarantees of bank debt, gets a thumbs down from the intended beneficiaries. But sadly, it isn’t the general […]
Read more...The markets in the US did not take at all well to Henry Paulson’s announcement that he wanted to get his hands on the rest of the TARP allotment (a remaining $350 billion) and spend it so as to help consumers go to the mall again. As one correspondend, Andrew, noted: 1) Is the dog-chasing-its-tail […]
Read more...The latest back-handed insult may be yet another variant of the Bush “we don’t do multilateralism” syndrome. Unfortunately, as various pundits writing at the Financial Times have pointed out, the US’s stranglehold on power is slipping. Even Obama in the campaign repeatedly said that a country cannot maintain military dominance if it is not a […]
Read more...Last night, we posted a VoxEU article on the unraveling of Iceland that (among other things) said that the problem was that the financial sector had gotten so large that the government could not possibly rescue it. The author made a comment in passing that indicated he thought this was not a problem shared by […]
Read more...As readers may have noticed, we have gotten exercised about how brazenly the Treasury has been in lavishing cash on favored interests. Felix Salmon took up the theme, admittedly with less choler: There does indeed seem to have been a visible change in Treasury policy since the election. Until that point, it cared a little […]
Read more...Many years ago, when I was in business school, one of the courses was taught by George Cabot Lodge. He said he could remember distinctly the day in 1968 that it occurred to him that the US could not simultaneously end poverty, send a man to the moon, and fight a ground war in Asia, […]
Read more...As this Bloomberg article discusses in detail, the Fed has violated promises it made to Congress, both regarding the amount it would lend (the amounts are vastly in excess of anything envisaged) and its commitments about transparency (which have gone completely by the wayside). Bloomberg has petitioned to get certain details disclosed via a Freedom […]
Read more...This article from the Times Online makes abundantly clear that UK banks do not plan to pass on any future base rate cuts by the Bank of England to customers. However it does not do a very good job of explaining why the bankers think they will not be sufficiently profitable if they add the […]
Read more...Personally, I would lay more blame for any damage to the Swiss banking brand to the fear of the possible compromise of Switzerland’s standing as a tax haven. However, as we will discuss, the giant Swiss bank UBS has lost a lot of prvate banking clients over worries about the bank’s soundness, something completely contrary […]
Read more...Although Asian markets opened up nicely on the Obama victory, Europe is focusing on credit market woes, and US futures are down at this hour. From Bloomberg: Credit markets are still creaking even after the biggest decline on record in the rate banks say they charge each other to borrow dollars. The London interbank offered […]
Read more...You cannot make this stuff up. From the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s web site: Michael Alix has been named a senior vice president in the Bank Supervision Group of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He will serve as a senior advisor to William L. Rutledge, executive vice president, Bank Supervision Group…. […]
Read more...From the Daily Mail (hat tip Jesse): Goldman Sachs is on course to pay its top City bankers multimillion-pound bonuses – despite asking the U.S. government for an emergency bail-out. The struggling Wall Street bank has set aside £7billion for salaries and 2008 year-end bonuses, it emerged yesterday. Each of the firm’s 443 partners is […]
Read more...In a move the stock market greeted with considerable cheer, JP Morgan announced that it was widening its program to modify mortgages. From the New York Times: JPMorgan Chase became the latest big bank to pledge to cut monthly payments, by lowering interest rates and temporarily reducing loan balances for as many as 400,000 homeowners. […]
Read more...One of the widely criticized features of Japan’s approach to its post-bubble crisis was that its regulators tried for some time to avoid the recognition of bank losses. In a deflationary environment, it was not clear how this would lead to a better ending, since with a flagging economy and no inflation to reduce the […]
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