Political Economy

Frederick J. Sheehan is the author of Panderer to Power: The Untold Story of How Alan Greenspan Enriched Wall Street and Left a Legacy of Recession  (McGraw-Hill, 2009) and "The Coming Collapse of the Municipal Bond…

This is just in from Bloomberg: The Federal Reserve must disclose details of emergency loans it made to banks in 2008, after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an industry appeal that aimed to shield the records from public view.…

Here is an earthquake risk map of the U.S. from the Daily Mail.

“I don’t have any enthusiasm for ... trying to shrink the relative importance of the financial system in our economy" -Timothy F. Geithner According to the man running U.S. economic policy, American banks need to be even…

So the dialling for dollars campaign is under way in U.S. municipalities. I'm talking about the use of eminent domain laws to dispossess property owners of property in order to make way for luxury facilities. This is an ongoing process I…

Marc Chandler wrote a good piece on the politics of nuclear in Germany and elsewhere in Europe. I want to piggyback on his comments with some of my own thoughts and questions regarding what this could mean for the energy space. This is a…

This is just in from CNBC's John Carney: a key advisor to U.S. President Obama will leave the Federal Housing Authority where he is a regulator of the mortgage industry and make a beeline straight for the industry he once oversaw. When…

By Marc Chandler The Japanese nuclear accident has implications for Europe. The EU wants to have stress tests on members nuclear plants. The tests are not mandatory, but may be difficult to refuse. Switzerland has halted its nuclear…

By Marc Chandler The FOMC tweaked their economic assessment and recognized the sharp rise in commodity prices in recent months, but believes that longer-term inflation expectations remain anchored. It specifically says that it expects…

European officials have reached an agreement in principle that falls well shy of the “comprehensive plan” officials had promised and is unlikely to provide investors with a sense of closure to the debt crisis that began in late 2009. Yet…