regulation

Credit Writedowns has made it clear how little will there is in Washington for substantive reform in financial services.  But, let’s be more explicit in this post about what policy makers are doing.  I will use the recent…

Max Keiser and Yves Smith pointed me to an article by frequent CNBC contributor Charlie Gasparino on Obama’s fat cats meeting. I love Yves’ feigned surprise. Here are a few excerpts from Gasparino followed by a link to the full article.…

Last night on CBS’ 60 Minutes, President Obama attacked Wall Street as “fat cats,” saying he was not elected merely for their sake. Obviously, the President is now keenly aware of how his political capital is being lost due to the bailout…

Matt Taibbi is one of the few commentators in the mainstream media who is not worried about ‘access’ and has, therefore, been free to write much more critically about the economic crisis and reform efforts on Wall Street. His first piece…

This piece comes from Sam Stein at the Huffington Post The allegation of a quid pro quo was based on an email that Durbin received last spring after his amendment to allow judges to modify mortgages for homeowners who enter bankruptcy…

That is the question Newsweek asked of the Democratic Congressman from Massachusetts in charge of banking reform efforts in the U.S. House of Representatives in an interview.  Rather than answer the question fairly, Frank attacked the…

When I read Yves Smith's recent comments on Bank of America's repayment of its TARP funds, I couldn't help but think of a post I wrote six months ago called "Asymmetric information and corporate governance in bank bailouts." The…

Below are three videos from a talk at the 2009 Economics of Peace Conference in Sonoma, CA, where James Galbraith talks about the Hyman Minsky concept of the instability of stability. This concept is fundamental to the behavioural…

A lot has been made of the most recent FDIC quarterly report, especially the large increase in problem banks to 550 – at least in the blogospehere; some media outlets seem to be burying this news.  Underneath this news are the specific…

Two weeks ago as the Financial Reform Bill was wending its way through Congress, Paul Kanjorski emerged as the champion of breaking up too-big-to-fail financial institutions.  After seeing trillions of dollars in taxpayer money go to…