government

Here, Maxine Waters, a U.S. Congresswoman from Los Angeles gets hot under the collar about the banking industry given its predatory lending (credit cards and housing) in her constituency. You may remember she was very skeptical about the…

We heard testimony before the House Banking Committee in Washington today. The CEOs of eight large financial institutions are being raked over the coals by Congress. It was a scene which reminded me of the Pecora Hearings during the Great…

Politico asked a bunch of pundits from across the political spectrum to size up U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's performance in explaining his plan for rescuing the U.S. banking system. They were asked, "Did Tim Geithner blow it? What…

I will dispense with the commentary and let you judge for yourself.

Caroline Baum has a good column today at Bloomberg.com regarding public anger in America.  She correctly states that the American public is not just angry at Wall Street, but at what Wall Street represents in terms of special interests,…

I watched the proceedings of the UK Treasury Committee with HBOS and RBS this morning on Bloomberg UK TV and it was a dismal sight. It had the feel of the Nuremburg trials, honestly. The clip below doesn't do justice to how tense the…

This video from the Wall Street Journal demonstrates what happens when governments go bankrupt.

We are barely two weeks into Barack Obama's tenure and reports are surfacing everywhere that his "team of rivals" is at each other's throat. President Obama had said just after the election that he was looking to pull together the best and…

I have been out the entire morning and haven't been able to read any news reports on the GDP numbers. However, I have just now had a chance to look at the data and wanted to share my thoughts with you, unfiltered by the media reports. I…

This post from January 2009 explains why banks do not increase lending capacity when uncertainty about the level of existing loan losses already on their balance sheet makes them worry about future loan losses. Credit wariness will be the…