Category Archives: No Bank Is Indispensable
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
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
Does It Make Sense to Resurrect the Glass-Steagall Act?
In the present system, the more unrestricted the banks are, the more money they can generate “out of thin air,” and the more damage they can inflict upon the wealth-generation process. FULL ARTICLE by Frank Shostak
What they knew and when they knew it
“I have to think this train is probably going to leave the station soon and we need to focus our efforts on explaining the story as best we can. There were too many people involved in the deals — too … Continue reading
The Apparatchiks
The Big Government Boss isn’t going away
“Hindsight is a wonderful thing,” said Timothy W. Long, the chief bank examiner for the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. “At the height of the economic boom, to take an aggressive supervisory approach and tell people to stop … Continue reading
Securitization was maddeningly complex. Mandated transparency is the only solution.
With so much complexity, and uncertainty about future performance, it is not surprising that the securities are difficult to price and that trading dried up. Without market prices, valuation on the books of banks is suspect and counterparties are reluctant … Continue reading
The end of the recession will merely be the start of a long, painful journey, says Edmund Conway.
t’s a game of far more than two halves: more tactical than cricket, more stomach-churning than boxing and more complex than bridge. Throughout a magnificent summer of sport, one competition has lasted longer than any other, and generated the most … 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
The Committee to Defraud the World
To say now that ‘No one knew’ or ‘I was mistaken’ or ‘I was just doing as I was told’ is another in a series of lies and deceptions that have supported one of the greatest frauds in the history … Continue reading →