banks

Back in December when the Bernard Madoff scandal first hit, I wrote a post, Madoff as a signal to go for “regulation heavy,” suggesting that Madoff was emblematic of a reckless period in the United States, symbolized by the lax oversight of…

Most ordinary Americans feel a certain sense of rightoues indignation about the helping hand the U.S. banking industry is receiving from government. This sense of aggrievement is only made worse by suggestions that governemnt is not only…

This account bears remembering because we can see the 1929-1933 descent as a two-part episode, with the second part starting here. It should be noted that there were a lot of positive economic signs before the Creditanstalt ruined this.…

This is the name of a speech made by Kansas City Fed CEO Thomas Hoenig which is creating quite a stir. He makes the following points in his speech:

The quote of the day comes from Marc Faber via Fleet Street News: Meanwhile, the cop who had the Wall Street beat when the biggest heist in history was going on... and who engineered the loans to AIG and GM... is now the chief of police.…

Don Kohn's testimony before the Senate Banking committee was so outrageous that I feel compelled to re-post the first paragraphs of this article from Willem Buiter about the moral hazard it represents. Basically, the U.S. government…

Since Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy in September, the capital markets have been all but shut to large banks globally. Investors were spooked by the evisceration at Lehman, Washington Mutual and Wachovia to name but a few cases of near…

Beim was a Professor back when I was at Columbia, although I don't remember being in any of classes. Before he was a Professor, he worked as an Investment Banker at First Boston and Dillon Read, two white shoe firms that are now defunct,…

Below is an interview with an expert on the issue of mortgage cramdowns. Basically, this issue is all about debt forgiveness for borrowers and writedowns for lenders. Lenders do not like cramdowns for that reason. See below for a view on…

Oppenheimer has a research note out today that calls Tim Geithner an "evil genius." The genius moniker comes from the steady creep up the capital structure, giving Geithner access to huge pools of money as the Treasury dials for dollars.…