Economic Crisis
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November 05, 2009 06:33 PM
Thursday Links: Goldie’s Gall, Chait Check, FSA
The Wall Street Journal reported a couple of days ago that Goldman Sachs (an Audit funder) is trying to buy tax credits from Fannie Mae to offset its profits. Take it from here, Floyd Norris:
Goldman, you may recall, was saved with taxpayer money when the panic spread last year. A naïve person might think such a company...
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November 05, 2009 10:25 AM
Bloomberg Examines the Bank Lobby’s Armor
Bloomberg spotlights the Consumer Financial Protection Act and uses it as a jumping-off point for a smart story on the state of the finance-lobby's might.
The theme is that the financial industry is still awfully powerful but—and this is a new thing—not all-powerful anymore, particularly when it comes to consumer-facing businesses.
That's why the CFPA has been pretty much...
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November 04, 2009 02:10 PM
McClatchy: Goldman Laid Down with Dogs
Dean Starkman has been applauding McClatchy's series on Goldman Sachs (an Audit funder) for a couple of days now. Add another Audit appreciation today.
McClatchy has been doing what Dean has been calling for for a long time now: Looking much more closely at how Wall Street fueled the mortgage crisis and how it was deeply...
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November 04, 2009 12:19 PM
Bloomberg: Moneychangers in the Temples
Bloomberg notices that three prominent bankers in recent weeks have taken to UK churches to make the case that they're not evil. Really, they did that.
The moneychangers/temple headlines write themselves (see above), but Bloomberg being Bloomberg, it goes with its house brand of quirkiness, which in this case works well:
Profit `Not Satanic,’ Barclays Says, After Goldman...
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October 30, 2009 10:26 AM
An Excellent NYT Column on Financialization
Every writer knows the feeling of reading something you wish you'd written yourself. That's what I got with Floyd Norris's column today on why the financial industry pay is so huge and what to do about it.
For one, rather than try to whack the mole, something we've been frustrated with at The Audit, Norris looks to the...
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October 29, 2009 10:24 AM
The Colour of Galleon’s Money
Here's one of those strange stories that could be one that blows a story wide open or one that blows over quickly. Hard to tell.
The Financial Times's Henny Sender writes that the Galleon hedge fund, which collapsed amidst recent insider-trading charges, "paid banks 'millions' for edge" as the headline has it. Here's the lede:
The Galleon hedge fund...
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October 28, 2009 06:17 PM
Wednesday Links: Cable Bluster, Night School, Footnotes First
What was CNN doing having sports journalist Stephen A. Smith on to debate Times business wunderkind Andrew Ross Sorkin on Wall Street compensation practices? I'm all for having new, outside voices in the arena (so to speak), and we've criticized Sorkin a couple of times for toeing the Wall Street line, but might CNN have brought the notoriously controversy-courting...
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October 28, 2009 04:35 PM
Hard Truths on Social Security from Leonhardt
The New York Times's David Leonhardt has a smart column this morning on the administration's skewed spending priorities. By spelling out why they're skewed, he gives some insight into what's wrong with the economy more broadly.
Specifically, he looks at what's wrong with the Obama administration's recent proposal to send everybody on Social Security a $250 check next year....
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October 28, 2009 10:08 AM
Rhetoric and Reality on Pay
The Wall Street Journal has a nice analysis on pay czar Kenneth Feinberg's plan to restrict compensation at seven corporate-welfare cases, finding that in fact base pay will rise—sometimes sharply. But it makes a bit too much hay out of its findings.
WSJ Deputy Managing Editor Alan Murray says on Twitter that "pay rhetoric doesn't match the reality...
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October 27, 2009 04:42 PM
Seattle Times Reviews WaMu, Hometown Predator
An excellent postmortem details a corrupted culture
Hats off to The Seattle Times for an excellent two-part series investigating the demise of Washington Mutual, onetime hometown hero turned zero (literally).
The paper calls a spade a spade here, writing (emphasis mine) "In short, WaMu became one of the nation's biggest predatory lenders."
Hey, better late than never.
As The Audit, particularly Audit Chief Risk...
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October 26, 2009 04:19 PM
NYT Goes A1 on TBTF
Too big to fail makes the front page of The New York Times this morning, which reports that Congress, specifically Barney Frank, is toughening up the administration's plan to deal with the problem.
Specifically, it gets the scoop that the legislation will "make it easier for the government to seize control of troubled financial institutions, throw out management, wipe...
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October 23, 2009 05:43 PM
Much Ado About Not Much on Pay
Wall Street pay has been all over the news the last couple of days, leading the Journal and the Times and the like, though it looks like a bunch of noise to this observer—moves that are more like political PR ploys than anything of lasting consequence.
Joe Nocera feels somewhat similar it seems, writing that:
...much of Wall Street...
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October 23, 2009 09:36 AM
The High Bubble Era in Retrospect
"A growing family with a lot of debt.
A young couple with no down payment.
A business owner whose income was hard to document.
Every one of them was turned down for a home loan by three different lenders. I'm with Countrywide and I got them all approved."
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October 21, 2009 07:20 PM
WaPo on Hard Times in Bank City USA
The Washington Post has a very good story on the fall of Charlotte's once-mighty banking industry and the impact on the city.
Charlotte's the epicenter for this kind of thing, what with Wachovia's exit and Bank of America's new status as ward of the state, but the Post is smart to point out the damage the financial industry's troubles...
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Campaign Desk Politics & Policy
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