Category Archives: Who Guarantees the Guarantor?-You Do!
Business As Usual
Bank Bailout Bingo: How Both Parties Exploit Populist Anger By Walter Shapiro Two years after the TARP vote, hazy memories of the financial panic have created a bipartisan hatred of bailouts, as expressed in campaign commercials across the country.
Inexcusable Delay-Another reason for a change in Washington
Senate Leaves Credit-Starved Small Biz Hanging – Los Angeles Times Small businesses desperate for government help getting loans will have to wait at least until September before Congress moves on long-awaited legislation to pay for higher loan guarantees, lower fees … Continue reading
CBO Propaganda
I’ve seen some eye-poppin’, credulity-stretchin’ accounts in my time. The report “The Budgetary Impact and Subsidy Costs of the Federal Reserve’s Actions During the Financial Crisis,” just released by the Congressional Budget Office, ranks with the most extreme. It claims … Continue reading
It takes brains
The geniuses are at it again: Hide your wallet! AP GM wants to re-enter auto financing Tom Krisher Tuesday May 11, 2010 DETROIT (AP) — General Motors Co. executives want their own auto-financing arm so they can offer more competitive … Continue reading
Wall Street Big Fish Stink From The Head Down
Obama’s financial reform will fail because all the masters of the universe know how to do is make money. Wall Street’s Big Fish Stink From The Head Down – Robert Lenzner, Forbes
The Independence of the Fed
There is a thesis that the banks are in control of the Fed and as a result have gained control over the issuance of the currency of the United States. This thesis is based on the fact that the shares … Continue reading
ECONed: Sic Transit Gloria Americanus
Richard Smith, a London-based capital markets information technology manager, was kind enough to provide an advance copy of his review for the book ECONned: How Unenlightened Self Interest Undermined Democracy and Corrupted Capitalism by Yves Smith, the author of the … Continue reading
Why Obama is Now (finally) Getting Tough on Wall Street
Originally published at Robert Reich’s Blog For almost a year now, Democratic pollsters have been pointing out how much the public hates the bank bailout and despises Wall Street. But there was no reason for Democratic leaders in Congress or … Continue reading
Obama’s Big Sellout
Barack Obama ran for president as a man of the people, standing up to Wall Street as the global economy melted down in that fateful fall of 2008. He pushed a tax plan to soak the rich, ripped NAFTA for … Continue reading
Why Some People Are Poorer
In recent months, there has been a good deal of discussion of change in the United States. Sadly, over the last two centuries, the direction in which this country has been changing seems to be away from liberty and towards … 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
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
Robbing Peter to pay Paul
As political pressure has reduced the price tag of expanding coverage to below $1 trillion over ten years, many observers assumed Democrats would react by trimming financial assistance for the middle class–that is, people making between twice and four times … Continue reading
A Short Question For Senior Officials Of The New York Fed
At the height of the financial panic last fall Goldman Sachs became a bank holding company, which enabled it to borrow directly from the Federal Reserve. It also became subject to supervision by the Federal Reserve Board (with the NY Fed on point) – … 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
The growing debt bomb – Facing a one- to three-year countdown
By Richard W. Rahn Assume you had put much of your savings into U.S. government bonds and then you learned the following. In just the last eight months, the Congressional Budget Office estimates of the amount of additional federal debt … Continue reading
It’s Unemployment, Stupid!
Pittsburgh protesters demand G20 do more for jobs Forbes “We’re not going to accept a jobless recovery,” said Larry Adams, a postal worker who came from Jersey City, New Jersey, for the protest. …
US bowls a tricky ball to markets
Curiously, as Treasuries were rallying, equities on both sides of the Atlantic were capering to almost their highest levels this year. After moves this week, when bond and equity prices fell together, it has led some to ask whether the … Continue reading
Some Fear N.Y. Fed Too Influenced by Wall Street – Washington Post
New York Fed President William C. Dudley served 10 years as Goldman Sachs’s chief economist. (By Kevin Clark — The Washington Post) By Neil Irwin Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, July 20, 2009 NEW YORK — The low-slung cubicles wrap … Continue reading
The End?
Error One was to permit a bubble in the 1980s. Error Two was to wait a decade before opting for monetary “shock and awe” through quantitative easing. The US Federal Reserve has moved faster but already seems to think the … Continue reading
Obama’s Economic Box
Despite the administration’s aggressive and costly economic policy initiatives, there is trouble all around. Barely six months in office, President Obama already finds himself in an economic box. For despite his aggressive and costly economic policy initiatives, the jobs market … Continue reading
Who’s to blame for the housing crash?
To read “Our Lot: How Real Estate Came to Own Us” is to relive, in painful, anecdotal detail, the real estate bust that brought our economy low. Through Alyssa Katz, a journalism professor at New York University and the former … Continue reading
How a Loophole Benefits GE in Bank Rescue Industrial Giant Becomes Top Recipient in Debt-Guarantee Program General Electric Co. CEO Jeffrey Immelt, center, is applauded by Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm during a news conference Friday, June 26, 2009, in Birmingham, … 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 →