Category Archives: It Is Nice To Be Part of the Elite!
Let Them Eat Credit
By most counts, the U.S. economy started growing in the middle of last year. For many Americans, though, it does not feel as if the Great Recession has ended—unemployment and underemployment are still alarmingly high, and job growth is weak. … Continue reading
Small business sidelined in slow recovery from recession
In every recession over the last three decades, it has been America’s small businesses — those Lilliputian companies with fewer than 100 employees — that stepped forward, began hiring and pulled the country out of the mire. Not this time. … Continue reading
How Carl Levin Got Goldman Sachs’s Goat
Interview by Paul Smalera, senior editorApril 30, 2010: 3:21 PM ET (Fortune) — At Tuesday’s epic Goldman Sachs hearing, Senator Carl Levin of Michigan led a public grilling of Wall Street not seen by a government panel since the Depression-investigating … Continue reading
Greenspan helps create the problem and then explains it?
Washington’s Blog Greenspan’s big defense is that the financial crisis was caused by a “once-in-a-century” event. Forget about the fact that the “once-in-a-century event” couldn’t have happened if Greenspan’s Fed hadn’t: Turned its cheek and allowed massive fraud Acted as … Continue reading
Sic transit America?
Flagging: a US sailor stands on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS George Washington If a week is a long time in politics, a decade is starting to look like an age in geopolitics. Comparing the America that … Continue reading
Break for Companies in Bailout’s Fine Print
One of the federal government’s most opaque methods for bailing out the banking system allowed a handful of giant institutions to save up to $25 billion on their borrowing costs, a Congressional panel estimated on Friday. Seven companies received about … Continue reading
Did “Smart Guys” Destroy Wall Street?
I think Calvin Trillin–or at least his bar-room companion–is really on to something here: “The financial system nearly collapsed,” he said, “because smart guys had started working on Wall Street.” … I reflected on my own college class, of roughly the same … Continue reading
Perpetual War
Strategerizing: Military intellectuals envision a 50-year “Long War” against al Qaeda consisting of counterinsurgency operations spanning Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Horn of Africa, the Philippines and beyond, Tom Hayden discusses in The Nation. “Comparing al Qaeda in AfPak to al … Continue reading
Goldman’s Pre-emptive Influence
An Inside Look at How Goldman Sachs Lobbies the Senate, by Matt Taibbi: …Later on this week I have a story coming out in Rolling Stone that looks at the history of the Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers collapses. The … Continue reading
Socialism in America
Socialism in America A great deal has been made in recent weeks about Ronald Reagan‘s critique of nationalized or socialized health care from 1961: We can go back a bit further, though, and take a look at an intriguing piece … Continue reading
“Increasingly, the determination of when to default is not guided by the moral question: Is this the right thing to do? It is guided by the pragmatic concern: Am I too far underwater on my mortgage?”
Walking Away When You Can Pay By Kelsey VanOverloop Homeowners are turning to the “strategic default” — walking away from a mortgage even when there are funds available to keep paying. “Increasingly, the determination of when to default is not … Continue reading
JP Morgan Chase Triumphant
Jamie Dimon has won big. JP Morgan Chase now stands alone, both in financial position and political clout – including special access to the White House and, as explained in today’s NYT, Rahm Emanuel’s likely attendance at his next board meeting tomorrow. … Continue reading
Robert Rubin: Whiz Kid?
The death of Robert McNamara has confronted the architects of another massive national catastrophe with a challenge: Will they, like McNamara in his post-Vietnam agony, acknowledge their failings and confess the error of their ways? Will they come up with … Continue reading
Our $17 Trillion Chinese Split Won’t Be Pretty
Returning from China last month, U.S. Congressman Mark Kirk had a bearish take on a high-level visit by American officials. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner claimed the U.S.’s biggest creditor voiced great confidence in its debt. Kirk, an Illinois Republican, came … Continue reading
Prima Donnas of the Banking World
William White predicted the approaching financial crisis years before 2007′s subprime meltdown. But central bankers preferred to listen to his great rival Alan Greenspan instead, with devastating consequences for the global economy. William White had a pretty clear idea of … Continue reading
American Socialist State
President Obama’s visit to Moscow this week may turn out to be a very good thing. Forget all this jibber-jabber about nuclear disarmament. There is no better reminder than the former Soviet Union for how the fantasies of a few … Continue reading
Raises For The Elite
John Mack of Morgan Stanley (MS) made sure that he had a large base salary for this year, even though his firm nearly fell apart last year. The management of Citigroup (C) also wants to do something for its “best” … Continue reading
G8 signals the end of the financial crisis, but what caused it?
The weekend G8 communiqué, coming after four months of stabilisation in most financial markets, seemed to mark the official end of the financial crisis. If so, what lessons should be learnt for economic and financial policies in the months ahead? … Continue reading
Citigroup Circling the Wagons
It’s starting to look like the spring awakening in bank stocks may not be enough to save the CEOs of America’s biggest troubled banks, Citigroup’s Vikram Pandit and Bank of America’s Ken Lewis. A top banking regulator is agitating for … Continue reading
America’s real power struggle: super rich liberals vs. ordinary plutocrats
With the economy floundering, Wall Street in disgrace, and American capitalism facing its most serious ideological challenge in one, two, or three generations (you can take your pick), it’s a good moment to remember Lenin. While the bearded Bolshevik’s grasp … Continue reading
Feeling the Squeeze, Exclusive Country Clubs Get the Common Touch
Their standing dinner reservation at the country club is for 6:30 p.m., because at least that much never changes. Every Wednesday night, Charles and Mimi Cluss dress in pleated slacks and suit jackets and drive to the manicured playground where … Continue reading
Is The Federal Reserve Overreaching?
A good article at Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/2009/05/19/federal-reserve-ron-paul-fdic-sec-opinions-columnists-bernanke.html
Stress test haiku
Via the Seattle PI: The stress tests are done Surprise — many banks are fine Now, go buy that bridge H/T Corrente
Control Without Accountability
I’ve been unimpressed with this oft-quoted bit from Phillip Swagel’s insider account of the Paulson Treasury. Legal constraints were omnipresent throughout the crisis, since Treasury and other government agencies such as the Federal Reserve must operate within existing legal authorities. … Continue reading
Why can’t everyone see this???
The consumer retreats The world economy entered the current crisis in a badly lopsided condition, with the American consumer borrowing massively to buy products from Chinese and European manufacturers who happily socked away all their extra cash while producing more … Continue reading →