banks

A friend commented to me when he saw the story that Iceland had been upgraded by Fitch, the ratings agency, that this "sure makes default look palatable". Obviously, Iceland is not out of the woods yet but their relative success says there…

This is a good and in-depth interview with Bill Black conducted by George Mason economics professor Russ Roberts. I highly recommend your listening to it

Here's the latest story that's been getting buzz around the internet: banks are trying to get troubled mortgages off their books without having to go through costly foreclosure processes and they are offering homeowners cash incentives to…

Looks like there’s a storm brewing in the U.S. repo markets. It figures: profit-center banks have every motivation to stay one step ahead of the regs and the pols. Since the gamekeepers have now gotten around to looking at proprietary…

Cash accounts for almost 6% of all corporate assets and the highest in sixty years. This increase is a result of a number of factors. Record profits give businesses the wherewithal. But corporations are not rewarded for the cash holdings.…

Cyprus is not an important player on the world's financial stage but it does bear noting that banking and sovereign debt problems run both wide and deep in the European Union. The latest news underscoring these difficulties comes via Fitch,…

The Obama administration’s record of prosecuting elite financial frauds is worse than the Bush administration’s record, which is a very large statement. Neither administration has prosecuted any elite CEO for the epidemic of mortgage fraud…

Bill Moyers talks to former Citicorp and Citigroup head John Reed about what's wrong in the banking sector. John Reed readily acknowledges his role in bringing down the Glass-Steagall Act (Hat tip finance Addict).

I was thinking about that last post I wrote on the euro zone and regulatory forbearance. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. So here's a picture that captures my thinking pretty well.

This is me thinking out loud about how regulatory forbearance in the S&L crisis mirrors today's policy path.