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Economic Crisis

  1. February 08, 2010 10:56 AM

    The Wall Street End Game

    By Dean Starkman

    Barry Ritholtz sees no new news in yesterday’s Times piece recreating the AIG/Goldman talks, which forced the insurer to hand over collateral, pushed it toward the edge of insolvency, and revealed the yawning size of its exposure to toxic securities.

    And I can understand the point.

    But just as the outlines of the AIG bailout story—the widest public...

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  2. February 05, 2010 02:21 PM

    Bond Market Blow-Ups

    By Holly Yeager

    If another reminder is needed that we should all pay more attention to the bond market, the Greek debt crisis provides one.

    It's not like we really want to learn the ins-and-outs of the fixed-income business; just like we're not all that inclined to study the melting temperatures of Arctic sea ice or the design of Toyota's...

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  3. February 04, 2010 10:49 AM

    The Journal Reveals Yet Another Mortgage Bug

    By Dean Starkman

    This is just a good story by Carrick Mollenkamp in the Journal this morning, showing one more trapdoor in the mortgage products sold during the bad old days.

    Mortgage-Index Quirks Prove Costly

    That’s putting it mildly.

    Apparently, adjustable rate mortgages sold during the period, besides their many other well-documented defects, also were pegged to different indices, and now...

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  4. February 02, 2010 10:40 AM

    Volcker Pushed Back

    By Dean Starkman

    When Wall Street doesn’t like something, one thing is certain: the public will hear about it.

    The pushback on the Volcker rule, which would ban proprietary trading at deposit-taking financial institutions and limit bank size, has been fast, furious, voluminous, and, some accounts would have you believe, fatal.

    A news service called dealReporter created buzz last night reporting...

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  5. January 29, 2010 06:54 PM

    Audit Notes: Uh Oh, Joe Cassano; Asian Markets; BW Hires

    By Ryan Chittum

    Reuters reports that AIG may have misled investors on material information related to its exposure to subprime mortgages.

    Investigative reporter Matthew Goldstein has waded through Schedule A and determined that some 30 percent of the CDO's insured were after 2005. That matters, not only because that was when the mortgage mania reached its peak, but also because Joseph Cassano,...

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  6. January 29, 2010 04:18 PM

    Mortgage Securitization in the Roaring Twenties

    By Ryan Chittum

    Floyd Norris has a fascinating column today on new research that shows, yet again, that there's nothing new under the sun—even on Wall Street.

    And I thought mortgage securitization was something invented by Lewis Ranieri in the '80s.

    Norris writes about a paper released by the National Bureau of Economic Research, the same guys who bring you the...

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  7. January 29, 2010 11:07 AM

    Bloomberg’s Reilly Wrecks the Lex on Fed/AIG

    By Ryan Chittum

    Bloomberg's David Reilly has a terrific column up today on the New York Federal Reserve and what's wrong with its secrecy on the AIG bailout (and on everything else, for that matter).

    Reilly kicks things off with a half-joke :

    The idea of secret banking cabals that control the country and global economy are a given among conspiracy theorists...

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  8. January 28, 2010 06:31 PM

    Goldman, Gawker, and the Journal

    By Ryan Chittum

    Here's a good example of reporting by old media getting amplified and expanded upon by new media.

    The Wall Street Journal has a good page-one story today on how banks are finagling the compensation issue by providing other perks to bankers.

    Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc. are doling out shares that employees can sell within months—much sooner...

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  9. January 27, 2010 07:12 PM

    Outside the Forties

    By Ryan Chittum

    We've often complained that the press, much less politicians and the regulators, are still playing three-yards-and-a-cloud-of dust ball between the forty yard lines in the response to this crisis.

    But check out this paragraph deep in today's New York Times profile of Mervyn King, the head of the Bank of England:

    One who has had his ear is Laurence...

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  10. January 27, 2010 02:08 PM

    Advancing the AIG Story

    By Ryan Chittum

    Today is AIG day and there's lots of interesting stuff out there in the press (not to mention Geithner live on C-SPAN).

    First, there's quite a bit of focus on a November 5 presentation BlackRock made to Tim Geithner's New York Fed concerning the backdoor bailout of Wall Street and foreign banks through AIG. Here's how The Wall Street...

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  11. January 25, 2010 12:08 PM

    The Press Angle of the Fed’s Backdoor-Bailout Cover-up

    Geithner's New York Fed responded to a FOIA by withholding more information

    By Ryan Chittum

    Whatever Tim Geithner's New York Fed was trying to hide in the AIG backdoor bailout was so volatile it was deemed worthy of national-security-like classification, and the Fed reacted to media FOIA requests for information by withholding more information.

    Reuters, gets the scoop on emails that detail the discussion between the Fed, AIG, and the SEC.

    The SEC,...

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  12. January 22, 2010 11:26 AM

    What Does Tim Geithner Really Think About the Volcker Rule?

    By Ryan Chittum

    The New York Times, in a story about the sudden, somewhat shocking ascendance in the Obama orbit of the long-ignored Paul Volcker, gives voice to speculation that Tim Geithner's power is on the wane and that he may not "be long for the Obama world," something Henry Blodget says is likely (and which I called earlier this...

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  13. January 21, 2010 09:56 AM

    Obama (Finally) Gets Tough on Wall Street

    By Ryan Chittum

    In stunning news this morning, President Obama has reversed course and will propose a kind of Glass-Steagall II, as well as some kind of provision to rein in too-big-to-fail banks.

    Make no mistake about, this is a massive story. You'd think The Wall Street Journal would have it splashed across its front page, but you'd be wrong. Hard to figure...

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  14. January 21, 2010 12:12 AM

    Audit Notes: A Tax a Reaganite Can Love, Cramer, Mad Max

    By Ryan Chittum

    David Stockman, who was in the Reagan cabinet as budget director, comes out swinging for a too-big-to-fail bank tax in a terrific New York Times op-ed:

    In supplying the banks with free deposit money (effectively, zero-interest loans), the savers of America are taking a $250 billion annual haircut in lost interest income. And the banks, after reaping this ill-deserved...

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