banks

Watch the hour-long retrospective which aired tonight on PBS’s Frontline.  It should be very enlighteningregarding the seeds of the bubble and meltdown.  It examines who the players in the 1990s and 2000s were, what their attitude to…

Back in March when the US Government felt compelled to bail out out Citigroup, Tracy Alloway over at FT Alphaville noticed a curious thing – Citigroup had effectively been nationalized. No, they were not seized by government, but Citi was…

David Einhorn delivered a speech at the 2009 Value Investing Conference that is creating a lot of buzz in the blogosphere. He said a lot of interesting things about the investing and political climate.  A surprising amount of it comes…

The title of this post is somewhat misleading – designed to be provocative to get you to read what I have to say. Indeed, I am going to defend Goldman Sach’s right to pay what it likes to its employees. But, I am also going to defend your…

Further proof that the reflationary efforts of policy makers is taking hold comes from London in the form of record high house prices.  The Guardian reports: Property asking prices in London have broken through the record high set…

From the FDIC: San Joaquin Bank, Bakersfield, California, was closed today by the California Department of Financial Institutions, which appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as receiver. To protect the depositors,…

Elizabeth Warren, chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel, is certainly looks to be fighting the good fight. At the conclusion of the Buttonwood Gathering in New York on Fixing Finance, she met with Tech Ticker’s Aaron Task and gave him…

Ireland has made heroic strides in trying to deal with its economic problem after a spectacular property bust. But it is looking increasingly like it will not be enough. According to a senior Irish minister, the next stop for Ireland could…

I was heartened to hear that Alan Greenspan has repudiated the Too Big to Fail doctrine (as practiced in the Bush and Obama Administrations) in such unequivocal terms. He almost sounded like a Teddy Roosevelt trust buster. Nevertheless,…

In speaking to the Council of Foreign Relations, Greenspan said what I have heard many other credible financial experts say, namely that financial institutions which are ‘too big to fail’ (TBTF) are simply too big. Is this Alan Greenspan…