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Want to Save Our Economy from Almighty Greed? Here Are 10 Crucial Fights and Key Fighters to Watch

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

AlterNet - By Zach Carter - Nov. 06 (Opinion) - There are no less than four federal regulators responsible for overseeing consumer protection in finance, and all of them are terrible.

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Too Big to Fail - Too Big to Exist -

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

senate.gov - By Senator Bernie Sanders - Nov. 06 (Statement) - Senator Bernie Sanders introduced legislation that would break up financial institutions that are too big to fail. "If an institution is too big to fail, it is too big to exist," Sanders said. "We should break them up so they are no longer in a position to bring down the entire economy. We should end the concentration of ownership that has resulted in just four huge financial institutions holding half the mortgages in America, controlling two-thirds of the credit cards, and amassing 40 percent of all deposits."

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Why did blue-chip Goldman take a walk on subprime's wild side?

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

McClatchy - By Greg Gordon - Nov. 04 (News Report) - Goldman Sachs was one of the last Wall Street giants to enter the subprime lending world, but when it did, it quickly climbed into bed with profligate, highflying firms — companies such as New Century Financial Corp. In at least nine deals from 2002 to 2007, Goldman sold bonds backed by more than $5 billion of New Century's mortgages, one even after the California lender's underwriting criteria all but disintegrated and a cash squeeze paralyzed its operation. Goldman also marketed at least three secret offshore deals bearing New Century's name.

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Our Free Market Makes Economic Collapse Inevitable

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Bill Moyers Journal - By Bill Moyers, James Galbraith - Nov. 02 (Interview) - The headlines are trumpeting recovery — some are even proclaiming an end to the recession in the United States (unofficially, that is). The US economy grew in the third quarter for the first time in a year. But there are some caveats — although jobless claims dipped slightly, many analysts still warn of a "jobless recovery." for a number of years to come. And then there's the small print — will this recovery be permanent or is it a function of the stimulus masking bigger problems? The Wall Street Journal warned: "The recovery thus far has been heavily supported by federal money, casting a question mark over the economy's underlying strength as government support dwindles." That unease is echoed by JOURNAL guest James K. Galbraith

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CIT files for bankruptcy: A prepackaged pratfall

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Economist - Nov. 02 (News Analysis) - THE most gut-wrenching failures may be over, but the financial crisis continues to claim the occasional big victim. CIT, a lender to small and medium-sized businesses, from clothing retailers to Dunkin’ Donuts franchisees, filed for bankruptcy on Sunday November 1st after failing to garner enough support for a debt-restructuring plan. With $71 billion in assets, the century-old firm is only one-ninth the size of Lehman Brothers, which collapsed in September 2008. Nevertheless, its Chapter 11 filing augurs ill for America’s corporate minnows, whose financing options have narrowed dramatically over the past year.

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Why Keep Geithner?

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

MSNBC - By Dylan Ratigan - Nov. 02 (News Analysis) - A year ago it was revealed to the American people that our banking system was a legalized Ponzi scheme in which bank and insurance CEOs paid themselves billions of dollars in personal compensation to lend and insure assets with money they didn't have

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How To Spam Facebook Like A Pro: An Insiders Confession

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

TechCrunch - By Dennis Yu - Nov. 02 (Special Report) - How To Spam Facebook Like A Pro: An Insiders Confession

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Interview with James Galbraith

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By BillMoyers - Oct. 30 (Interview) - We need to find another path for economic expansion. We need to set a strategic direction. Our problem now, our big social and environmental problem, is energy. It's climate change. It's the greenhouse gas emission issue. If we built a set of institutions that could deal with that problem effectively, you could employ a large part of the labor force for a generation, dealing with that. And you'd then make that profitable for private enterprise to get into in a serious way.

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Economy grows by 3.5 percent, signals recession may have ended

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Neil Irwin - Oct. 29 (News Report) - The U.S. economy roared to life in late summer, as gross domestic product rose at a 3.5 percent annual rate in the July through September period. It was the best quarter for growth in two years though analysts warned that it was fueled largely by government recovery programs.

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American bank failures: An uncelebrated century

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Economist - Oct. 26 (News Analysis) - Partners Bank of Naples, Florida, earned a dubious distinction on Friday October 23rd. It became the 100th American bank failure of the year. On the same day six other lenders—two more in Florida and banks in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois and Georgia—joined the rollcall of failure in the aftermath of the credit crisis.

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Trying to Rein In ‘Too Big to Fail’ Institutions

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Stephen Labaton - Oct. 26 (News Report) - Congress and the Obama administration are about to take up one of the most fundamental issues stemming from the near collapse of the financial system last year — how to deal with institutions that are so big that the government has no choice but to rescue them when they get in trouble.

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How to change too-big-to-fail ethic?

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Philadelphia Inquirer - By Harold Brubaker - Oct. 26 (News Report) - Thirty years ago, the biggest bank in Philadelphia was in deep trouble because of a bad bet on interest rates. First Pennsylvania, then the oldest bank in the nation, had invested heavily in long-term government securities paying fixed rates of interest. When Paul Volcker, then the chairman of the Federal Reserve, raised interest rates in 1978 to fight inflation, the bank was crushed; it had to pay more to borrow than it earned on the bonds.

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Learning to Love Insider Trading

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - Oct. 25 (Opinion) - Here's a hot tip: Want to keep companies honest, make the markets work more efficiently and encourage investors to diversify? Let insiders buy and sell, argues Donald J. Boudreaux.

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Time to bust up the world's banking giants

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

National Post - By Diane Francis - Oct. 24 (Editorial) - The world desperately needs Glass Steagall on steroids. Banking must be atomized -- a la America's 1933 Glass Steagall lelgislation -- in order to separate high-risk investment banking from taxpayer-insured deposits. Read more: http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/columnists/story.html?id=02859c06-69a3-45f1-a321-dff7755d2de8#ixzz0UuegnxNd The New Financial Post Stock Market Challenge starts in October. You could WIN your share of $60,000 in prizing. Register NOW

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U.S. to Order Steep Pay Cuts at Firms That Got Most Aid

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Stephen Labaton - Oct. 22 (News Report) - The seven companies that received the biggest bailouts are expected to cut the salaries of their 25 best-paid executives by an average of about 90 percent from last year.

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The Consensus On Big Banks Begins To Move « The Baseline Scenario

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

baselinescenario.com - By Simon Johnson - Oct. 21 (Opinion) - ust when our biggest banks thought they were out of the woods and into the money, the official consensus in their favor begins to crack. The Obama administration’s publicly stated view – from the highest level in the White House - remains that the banks cannot or should not be broken up. Their argument is that the big banks can be regulated into permanently low risk behavior.

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Wall Street's Naked Swindle

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Rolling Stone - By Matt Taibbi - Oct. 20 (Special Report) - Like all the great merchants of the bubble economy, Bear and Lehman were leveraged to the hilt and vulnerable to collapse. Many of the methods that outsiders used to knock them over were mostly legal: Credit markers were pulled, rumors were spread through the media, and legitimate short-sellers pressured the stock price down. But when Bear and Lehman made their final leap off the cliff of history, both undeniably got a push — especially in the form of a flat-out counterfeiting scheme called naked short-selling.

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Goldman Can Spare You a Dime

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Frank Rich - Oct. 18 (Opinion) - The less we know about Goldman Sachs, the easier it is for reckless gambling to return to capitalism’s casino.

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How Moody's sold its ratings -- and sold out investors

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

McClatchy - By Kevin G. Hall - Oct. 18 (Investigative Report) - As the housing market collapsed in late 2007, Moody's Investors Service, whose investment ratings were widely trusted, responded by purging analysts and executives who warned of trouble and promoting those who helped Wall Street plunge

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Obama advisers say all options weighed for creating jobs, let stimulus spending keep working

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Associated Press - By Douglass K Daniels - Oct. 18 (News Report) - WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama is considering all options to create jobs, including another stimulus package, while trying to pull the economy out of a deep recession and deal with a record deficit, White House advisers said Sunday. With more

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As Foreclosures Hit All-Time High, Wall Street on Pace to Hand Out Record $140B in Employee Bonuses

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By William Black, JUAN GONZALEZ,AMY GOODMAN - Oct. 15 (News Report) - The Dow Jones Industrial Average has topped 10,000 for the first time in a year, as JPMorgan Chase reported massive profits in the third quarter. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that major US banks and securities firms are on pace to pay their employees about $140 billion this year—a record high. But on Main Street, foreclosures are also at record levels, and the official unemployment rate is expected to top ten percent.

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Slovenian Philosopher Slavoj Zizek on Capitalism, Healthcare, Latin American "Populism" and the "Farcical" Financial Crisis

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - Oct. 15 (Interview) - Zizek’s latest offering also excerpted in the October issue of Harper"s magazine opens with the words: “The only truly surprising thing about the 2008 financial meltdown is how easily the idea was accepted that its happening was unpredictable.” He goes on to recall how the demonstrations against the IMF and the World Bank over the past decade all protested the ways in which banks were playing with money and warned of an impending crash. They were met with tear-gas and mass arrests. The message, he writes, was “loud and clear, and the police were used to literally stifle the truth.”

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Geithner Aides Reaped Millions Working for Banks, Hedge Funds

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Bloomberg - By Robert Schmidt - Oct. 14 (News Report) - Some of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s closest aides, none of whom faced Senate confirmation, earned millions of dollars a year working for Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Citigroup Inc. and other Wall Street firms, according to financial disclosure forms.

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Snowe Voting Yes On Senate Finance Health Care Reform Bill

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Ryan Grim, Jeff Muskus, Sam Stein - Oct. 13 (News Report) - Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) said Tuesday that she intends to vote for the Senate Finance Committee's health care reform package. She cautioned that her vote should be seen as a sign of her faith in the process going forward, not as support for the final package that will arrive on the Senate floor. "Is this bill all that I would want? Far from it," said Snowe. "Is it all that it can be? No. But when history calls, history calls, and I happen to think that the consequences of inaction dictate the urgency of Congress to take every opportunity to demonstrate its capacity to solve the monumental issues of our time." Snowe's statement came several hours before a scheduled committee vote. "My vote today is my vote today. It doesn't forecast what my vote will be tomorrow," she said. It does keep her at the negotiating table and at the center of the debate; Snowe risked marginalizing herself if she voted no. Snowe is well aware of the math. Her vote, she said, comes with knowledge that Democrats don't need Republicans to pass the landmark legislation.

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Misguided Monetary Mentalities

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Paul Krugman - Oct. 12 (Opinion) - One lesson from the Great Depression is that you should never underestimate the destructive power of bad ideas. And some of the bad ideas that helped cause the Depression have, alas, proved all too durable: in modified form, they continue to influence economic debate today.

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