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Robert J. Shiller: "Are We Headed for Another Financial Crisis?" (final edition, as of MAR 8) - YouTube

3rd ed adds bond market. where richard koo explains bond prices are a symptom of the balance sheet recession as is "deflationary." // liquidity trap // predicting turning points is bad business - highlighting fundy skew is easy. // equity bubble BURST? no. bond bubble BURST? no. how abt unreasonable higher interest rates for businesses bc of Taper from Fed long dated bonds into illiquid market. like Koo argues as possibility, which would depress gdp growth further bc of higher capital cost than the economy fundy actually would demand. contributing 2 the secular stagnation. // Other case: Crash of China (too much of a good thing, irrational exuberance) & Western Central Banks have no means 2 ease further & Career Politicians have no guts 2 actually pull out the guns for once 4 intelligent fiscal stimulus w a long-term view (no white elephants & bridges 2 nowhere). // 19:30 status anxiety, Sozialer Abstieg, everyone for himself, austerity, inequality, Software, etc = secular stagnation

Robert Shiller financialcrisis GFC economic history book recovery ZIRP NIRP QE credit bubble equity bubble property bubble speculative bubbles speculative speculation psychology confidence irrational exuberance animal spirit austerity Fiscal Pact Schuldenbremse ideology dogma economic model financial crisis housing market UK USA China Japan Richard Koo deflationary hunt for yield sustainable sustainability Richardkoo balance sheet recession deflation secular stagnation negative real interest rate Taper BOJ BOE Fed ECB sovereign debt crisis monetary policy monetary system monetary stimulus unconventional monetary policy monetary transmission mechanism monetary theory modern monetary theory policy stimulus crony capitalism mainstreet.org mainstreet Wall Street exploitation uncertainty deleveraging savings rate business investment Sozialer Abstieg inequality income inequality tax code capital gains fairness Software Is Eating The World consumer confidence business confidence public investment productive investment personal investment underinvestment infrastructure investment socioeconomic status status anxiety social status zombie consumer zombie corporations zombie banks Gesellschaft solidarity society soziologie sociology worry squeezed middle class precariou
july 2015 by asterisk2a

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Staatsverschuldung als Problem der Generationengerechtigkeit | Lars P. Feld | SWR Tele-Akademie - YouTube

henry paulson and tim geithner said they are in a moral hazard. put it the way to either nationalise (aka the end of American Dream, Failure part of capitalism) or bailout (gov loans and co like TARP). Rather the moral hazard was to either put current and future unborn generation in debt servitude they had nothing to do with and keep criminals private with all its benefits. Or really give a warning shot a privatise banks and end the profligacy of crony capitalism and Wall Streets shareholder value creation only and profit maximisation - without consequences. // and Europe looks towards USA and did the same; made banks whole again (because they were really - TBTF - and would pushed some EU countries into Great Depression/Insolvency. especially France & Belgium where bank liabilities were too big for public balance sheet) and took some of the debt onto its public balance sheet (and gave bailout loans) to be served by current & future unborn generation.

Generationengerechtigkeit austerity bailout sovereign debt crisis economic history Failure zombie banks toobigtofail TBTF too big to jail Wall Street crony capitalism capitalism fiscal policy academia academic moralhazard morality American Dream GFC policy folly policy error World Bank IBS IMF liberal economic reform neoliberal neoliberalism PIIGSFB PIGS Greece Grexit UK fiscal sovereignty Pact Schuldenbremse Career Politicians No Representation democracy banking crisis history henrypaulson timgeithner benbernanke Ben Bernanke Makers lobbyist lobby Lobbying ideology dogma populism fairness manufactured consent propaganda financialcrisis FinancialCrisisInquiryCommission media conglomerate corporate state European Union fiscal transferunion European Eurobond currency Agenda 2010 hartz-iv Stability and Growth Pact generational conflict social tension social cohesion Verteilungskonflikt
july 2015 by asterisk2a

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BBC News - ECB's Draghi 'ready to act if needed'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvHvyvPd0PU + http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/soziales/ezb-senkt-leitzins-auf-rekordtief-von-0-5-prozent-a-897701.html "Die Währungshüter hoffen, dass die Finanzbranche das billige Geld in Form von Krediten an Unternehmen und Verbraucher weiterreichen wird." + http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/ezb-senkt-leitzins-draghis-gefaehrlicher-rettungsversuch-a-897771.html ... >> After the GFC, banks should have been privatised (creditors to take haircuts) in 2010/11, those who were not banks (ie lending), but mere zombie banks. Europe is doing the same mistake as Japan. >> see Apple example - unintended consequences. Microsoft too.

monetary policy financialcrisis GFC monetary theory modern monetary theory Europe unintended consequences zombie banks New Normal liquidity-trap banking crisis ECB monetary system political folly bank crisis lostdecade greatrecession policy folly QE debtoverhang communication economic history financial repression Debt Super Cycle NPL PIGS bubble error creditcrunch unconventional monetary policy ZIRP austerity PIIGS greatdepression zombie consumer deleveraging Japan balance sheet recession
may 2013 by asterisk2a

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We're (USA) Not Japan But One Can Always Hope | ZeroHedge

3 Years on ...

July 31 (Bloomberg) -- In today's "Single Best Chart," Bloomberg's Mike McKee displays how the current U.S. recovery is the slowest since the 1970's and even lags Japan at the same point of their recovery in 1993.

__Measured in Real GDP per capita :

USA post crisis (property and credit bubble + financial crisis followed by credit crunch, deleveraging, debt overhang and non-performing loans [balance sheet recession]) recovery is worse than the recovery of Japan from 1993 (property and equity bubble followed by credit crunch, deleveraging, debt overhang and non-performing loans [balance sheet recession]).

http://www.bloomberg.com/video/single-best-chart-worst-u-s-recovery-since-1970-s-UVkghBlRT8ydic0ovJ_iVA.html

-

And Tim Geithner once said "the USA is not Japan".

paulkrugman KennethRogoff carmenreinhart financialcrisis property bubble creditcrunch NPL debtoverhang zombie banks deleveraging richardkoo economic-thought economic model Europe GFC greatrecession economic history timgeithner lostdecade double-dip UK USA Japan
august 2012 by asterisk2a

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Interactive Visual History Of Financial Crises Since 1810 - Note Where The Fed Arrives | ZeroHedge

https://www.historyshots.com/FinancialCrisis/index.cfm

"The giant wave in the top section of the graphic depicts the percentage of world GDP by region in crisis during the 200 year period. It includes the four major financial crisis types (sovereign default, banking, currency, and inflation) along with stock market crashes. The bottom section provides a detailed chart of all sovereign defaults by country, region and year. It shows the repeating nature of sovereign default, a central theme of Reinhart and Rogoff's book."

This graphic is based on the New York Times and Wall Street Journal best seller This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly by Carmen M. Reinhart & Kenneth S. Rogoff. Using data developed by Reinhart and Rogoff, it maps the cyclical history of financial crisis from 1810 to 2010 for sixty-six countries representing 90% of world GDP.

book KennethRogoff economic-thought economic history carmenreinhart infographics financialcrisis history
february 2012 by asterisk2a

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Penetrating Insights On Why The Market Feels Like A Colonoscopy | ZeroHedge

In a widely quoted experiment by Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman (with others, published in 2003) over 600 subjects undergoing colonoscopies were given different versions of the same procedure. One set got essentially a short version, where the pain of the process peaked out near the end of the exam. The other group got a longer version, with the last few moments in relatively little discomfort. The second group reported much less pain when asked about the experience than the first.

Kahneman’s colonoscopy is a tailor made, if coarse, analogy to the ongoing sovereign debt woes in Europe. ...

The bottom line is that pain, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

financialmarkets financialcrisis richardkoo economic-thought economics balance sheet recession deleveraging GFC UK 2012 sovereign debt crisis Europe pain psychology behavioral finance
january 2012 by asterisk2a

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Sweden Revamps Central Bank Tool Kit on Crisis - Bloomberg

The crisis has demonstrated that central bank models don’t take financial system risks properly into account, Ingves said, adding that it’s necessary to design econometric models that better catch the dynamics of the global economy.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke last month signaled he also may be changing his view on the degree to which asset prices should be incorporated in monetary policy, a tool he in 2002 deemed “far too blunt” to prevent bubbles. “The possibility that monetary policy could be used directly to support financial stability goals, at least on the margin, should not be ruled out,” Bernanke said on Oct. 18 in a speech in Boston.

GFC financialcrisis financialmarket centralbanks lesson economics model academia academics monetary policy tools error folloy monetarism leverage deleveraging Riksbank ECB Fed balancesheet QE reform history
november 2011 by asterisk2a

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In Aftermath of Financial Crisis, Who\'s Being Held Responsible? - YouTube

As anger over the financial crisis lingers, questions remain as to who has been held accountable for their role in creating the conditions that led to the meltdown ... and who has not. Ray Suarez reports

... there is no law against greed, recklessness, failure, ignorance,
... no solid case could be made so far in that much complex financial world with so much participants, criminal behavior,
... and then there are missing resources on the side of enforcement
... revolving door between private and public sector. and the lobby
...

GFC responsibility accountability settelment SEC investigation goldmansachs Mozilo CountrywideFinancial FinancialCrisisInquiryCommission financialcrisis financialmarket lobby banking prosecution
november 2011 by asterisk2a

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Credit-Default Swap Risk Bomb Is Wired to Explode: Mark Buchanan - Bloomberg

The European nations are linked in a network of debts, as Bill Marsh recently illustrated in the New York Times with a beautiful piece of graphic art. Greece and Italy are prominent; Ireland, Portugal and Spain lurk ominously nearby. France and Germany seem exposed, too, as does the U.S.
The image is like a complex wiring diagram for a ticking debt bomb. Yet what it shows may be less important than what it leaves out: a largely invisible network of ties among institutions around the world, which could ultimately cause global financial chaos.
This hidden network has been created by institutions that buy and sell unregulated credit-default swaps. These are essentially insurance contracts on bonds; in the event of a default on the bond, the seller of the swap promises to pay the buyer the bond’s value.

The researchers showed that too much risk sharing can make it easy for distress to spread like a virus.

CDS Europe bomb debt bubble 2011 OTC sovereign crisis unknown toobigtofail 2008 AIG risk system systemicrisk problems exposure Greece PIIGS tippingpoint history lesson economics Financalmeltdown FinancialCrisisInquiryCommission financialmarket financialmarkets financialcrisis finance
november 2011 by asterisk2a

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W, V, U or L: How Is the Economic Recovery Shaping Up, Literally? - YouTube

Uploaded by PBSNewsHour on Oct 7, 2011
The latest unemployment figures out Friday reinforce the notion that the U.S. economy remains weak when compared to recoveries of the past. As part of his reporting on Making Sen$e of financial news, Paul Solman visits with economist Simon Johnson for a checkup on what shape the economic recovery is taking.

USA lostdecade greatrecession unemployment recovery 2011 outlook employment GDP japan history financialcrisis sovereign debt crisis greatdepression
october 2011 by asterisk2a

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Morgan Stanley at Brink Got $107B From Fed - Bloomberg

http://www.bloomberg.com/data-visualization/federal-reserve-emergency-lending

Hedge Funds pulled money out ... out of banks who facilitate their trades.
Prime brokers facilitate short trades, the sale of borrowed stock in the hope of buying it back later at a lower price. They also make margin loans to finance stock purchases. In exchange, hedge funds usually keep their cash and stock in accounts at the prime-brokerage companies.

“So if clients pulled their money out, the view was that money had not been lent out, so the cash would have been sitting there able to hand over. It turns out that that was not entirely correct.”

In reality, “prime brokers were able to reuse clients’ assets to raise cash for their own activities,” the financial crisis commission wrote in its final report, published in January. Azarchs said that in her years covering Morgan Stanley for S&P she never heard executives discuss the risk that the funding might evaporate.

Fed meltdown fiancial crisis discountwindow 2008 jpmorgan morganstanley interbank liquidity freeze emergency-lending operation benbernanke henrypaulson hedgefunds panic FinancialCrisisInquiryCommission banking lehmanbrothers history goldmansachs broker service lesson financialcrisis PrimaryDealerCreditFacility lenderoflastresort PDCF JimChanos JohnMack TermSecuritiesLendingFacility TSLF TARP POMO counterpartyrisk toobigtofail
august 2011 by asterisk2a

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Wall Street Aristocracy Got $1.2 Trillion in Secret Fed Loans - Bloomberg

By 2008, the housing market’s collapse forced those companies to take more than six times as much, $669 billion, in emergency loans from the U.S. Federal Reserve. The loans dwarfed the $160 billion in public bailouts the top 10 got from the U.S. Treasury, yet until now the full amounts have remained secret.

Fed financialcrisis GFC bailout TARP discountwindow 2008 meltdown FinancialCrisisInquiryCommission liquidity creditcrunch
august 2011 by asterisk2a

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Barofsky Says Fed's Secret Loans Needed More Oversight - YouTube

Neil Barofsky, former special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program and a Bloomberg Television contributing editor, talks about the Federal Reserve's emergency loans during the financial crisis. Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke's effort to keep the economy from plunging into depression included lending banks and other companies as much as $1.2 trillion of public money, according to a Bloomberg News compilation of data obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, months of litigation and an act of Congress. Barofsky speaks with Erik Schatzker on Bloomberg Television's "InsideTrack."

barofsky Fed bailout discountwindow monetary policy transparency oversight TARP GFC financialcrisis meltdown FinancialCrisisInquiryCommission centralbanks 2008 dollar
august 2011 by asterisk2a

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Wolfgang Munchau On How The Greek Rollover "Deal" Is A Toxic CDO | zero hedge

"This structure is still not quite so complex as some of the more elaborate CDOs we have encountered in the global financial crisis. If you take some time to work through the arrows and boxes, you see relatively quickly that this complex structure is not a private sector participation at all. Rather it is a private sector bail-out...

The punchline is not surprising, but it is funny:
The rollover agreement represents, from an economic point of view, nothing but a collateralised bond. It subordinates all other bondholders. The rating agencies would normally not hesitate to attach a default rating to Greek government debt.
So the solution is to create a complex structure, and claim that it is technically not a collateralised bond, but something that defies definition.

transparency financial finance financialcrisis financialmarket ratingagencies default greece PIIGS EFSF ESM bailout 2011 germany ECB angelamerkel ponzischeme CDO SIV scam sovereign debt crisis
july 2011 by asterisk2a

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The UK Is Preparing To Return To "Glass-Steagall" | zero hedge
UK banking 2011 GeorgeOsborne davidcameron Glass-Steagall lessons financialcrisis FinancialCrisisInquiryCommission toobigtofail bailout bailin reform regulation
june 2011 by asterisk2a

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How to avoid a lost decade - The Washington Post

Even with the massive 2008-09 policy effort that prevented financial collapse and depression, the United States is now halfway to a lost economic decade. From the first quarter of 2006 to the first quarter of 2011, the U.S. economy’s growth rate averaged less than 1 percent a year, similar to Japan in the period its bubble burst.

After bubbles burst there is no pent-up desire to invest. Instead there is a glut of capital caused by overinvestment during the period of confidence — vacant houses, malls without tenants and factories without customers. Meanwhile, consumers discover that they have less wealth than they expected, less collateral to borrow against and are under more pressure than they expected from their creditors. Pressure on private spending is enhanced by structural changes.

ecognizing current economic reality.

lostdecade japan USA greatrecession recovery financialcrisis deleveraging richardkoo larrysummers monetary fiscal policy paulkrugman stimulus 2011 double-dip
june 2011 by asterisk2a

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Day Trading Hipster Takes On David Tepper Dealbreaker: A Wall Street Tabloid Business News Headlines and Financial Gossip
wallstreet wamu hedgefunds financialcrisis
june 2011 by asterisk2a

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A healthy dynamic in job creation: Destruction - The Washington Post

young firms — business startups and a small number of new firms that grow very quickly — have played an outsize role in that process. In job creation, it turns out, it is not size that matters but the age of the firm. Small businesses don’t create all the new jobs — young ones do.
In recent years, however, this entrepreneurial dynamism began to slow. Job creation and job destruction began their decline as far back as the 1990s, and continued right up to the Great Recession, when job destruction fell to its lowest level in 30 years, and job creation even more. The average business became older and larger.

Perhaps you’ve noticed that we are halfway through this column about job creation and I have yet to mention the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy or fiscal stimulus or the deficit or even taxes. The reason is pretty simple: It’s hard to draw a convincing connection between any of them and a decline in entrepreneurial dynamism that began more than a decade ago.

jobmarket job-creation unemployment research economics study Fed monetary fiscal policy stimulus conservative Keynesianism entrepreneurship smallbusiness SMB microeconomics capitalism josephschumpeter productivity financialcrisis greatrecession recovery
june 2011 by asterisk2a

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The Mistake of 2010 - NYTimes.com

some of us warned that it was both too small and too short-lived. In particular, the effects of the stimulus would start fading out in 2010 — and given the fact that financial crises are usually followed by prolonged slumps, it was unlikely that the economy would have a vigorous self-sustaining recovery under way by then.

By the beginning of 2010, it was already obvious that these concerns had been justified. Yet somehow an overwhelming consensus emerged among policy makers and pundits that nothing more should be done to create jobs, that, on the contrary, there should be a turn toward fiscal austerity.the fact is that the policy response to the crisis was and remains vastly inadequate.
Those who refuse to learn from history are condemned to repeat it; we did, and we are. What we’re experiencing may not be a full replay of the Great Depression, but that’s little consolation for the millions of American families suffering from a slump that just goes on and on.

paulkrugman greatrecession USA recovery double-dip monetary fiscal policy politics barackobama presidency Fed benbernanke error economics economy unemployment stimulus financialcrisis
june 2011 by asterisk2a

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YouTube - Burns Says Don't Read Too Much Into Goldman Subpoena

Douglas Burns, a formal federal prosecutor, talks about the Manhattan District Attorney's office subpoena of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Goldman, the fifth-biggest U.S. bank by assets, is being asked to turnover information on the firm's activities leading into the credit crisis, according to two people familiar with the matter. Burns speaks on Bloomberg Television's "InBusiness with Margaret Brennan." (Source: Bloomberg)

goldmansachs subpoena 2011 SEC financialcrisis investigation settelment CDO Abacus
june 2011 by asterisk2a

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YouTube - Bloomberg TV: Jon Erlichman reports on Goldman Sachs
goldmansachs investigation financialcrisis
june 2011 by asterisk2a

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Libya's Investment With Goldman Ends in Losses, Acrimony - WSJ.com

In early 2008, Libya's sovereign-wealth fund controlled by Col. Moammar Gadhafi gave $1.3 billion to Goldman Sachs Group to sink into a currency bet and other complicated trades. The investments lost 98% of their value, internal Goldman documents show.

What happened next may be one of the most peculiar footnotes to the global financial crisis. In an effort to make up for the losses, Goldman offered Libya the chance to become one of its biggest shareholders, according to documents and people familiar with the matter.
Negotiations between Goldman and the Libyan Investment Authority stretched on for months during the summer of 2009. Eventually, the talks fell apart, and nothing more was done about the lost money.

lybia goldmansachs 2011 financialcrisis
may 2011 by asterisk2a

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World on course for next crisis, warns Gordon Brown - Telegraph

Mr Brown said the "resolve" to act seen immediately after the crisis has been replaced by indecision and vested interest. He urged politicians at the next G20 summit, which takes place in Cannes in November, to take control of a globalised financial system which is still "perilously" unregulated.

They fear "with good cause" that if Greece has to restructure its debt - effectively default - it could unravel a chain of trades based on the problematic debt and lay bare the interconnectedness of institutions around the world, said Stephen Lewis, an analyst at Monument Securities.

gordonbrown 2011 PIIGS default restructuring greece banking EMU lehmanbrothers finance financialcrisis FinancialCrisisInquiryCommission toobigtofail
may 2011 by asterisk2a

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Schwarmintelligenz: Gemeinsam sind wir dümmer - SPIEGEL ONLINE - Nachrichten - Wissenschaft

Bei fast allen Fragen zeigte sich, dass die zuerst gegebenen Antworten im Durchschnitt die besten waren. Je mehr die Probanden über die Schätzungen der anderen Studienteilnehmer wussten, umso mehr sank die Schwarmintelligenz. Extremwerte verschwanden nach und nach, die Schätzwerten der einzelnen Probanden näherten sich immer mehr an, ohne dass der Mittelwert dem tatsächlichen Wert näher kam.
Das Experiment zeige, dass sozialer Einfluss die Diversität der Antworten verringere, nicht jedoch den kollektiven Fehler, schreiben die Forscher im Wissenschaftsblatt "Proceedings of the National Academie of Sciences".

"Wenn Menschen sehen, wie andere Menschen denken und entscheiden, konvergieren die Meinungen", sagt Helbing. Dieser Effekt betreffe alle Gremien in Politik und Wirtschaft, überall, wo man zusammensitze und diskutiere. "Ein derartig zustande gekommener Konsens kann eine schlechte Entscheidung sein."

Consensus decision-making

psychology intelligence sociology information decissionmaking mass twitter research study financialcrisis FinancialCrisisInquiryCommission bubble democracy consensus voting influence influencer decision
may 2011 by asterisk2a

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20 biggest money losers - 1. Freddie Mac (1) - FORTUNE

This Dallas, TX-based electric utility company formally known as TXU Corp. was taken private in 2007 and has since been saddled with debt. The $45 billion leveraged buyout remains the biggest recorded in U.S. history and was one of the last big private equity deals before the financial crisis.

freddiemac fanniemae financialcrisis greatrecession housing bubble USA LBO financial history BofA
may 2011 by asterisk2a

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YouTube - Bernanke Offers Reasons for Slow Recovery From Crises: Video
creditcrunch KennethRogoff USA recovery greatrecession financialcrisis benbernanke
april 2011 by asterisk2a

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In Financial Crisis, No Prosecutions of Top Figures - NYTimes.com

[Tim Geithner & Co. their] worry, according to these people, sprang from a desire to calm markets, a goal that could be complicated by a hard-charging attorney general.

Whether prosecutors and regulators have been aggressive enough in pursuing wrongdoing is likely to long be a subject of debate. All say they have done the best they could under difficult circumstances.
But several years after the financial crisis, which was caused in large part by reckless lending and excessive risk taking by major financial institutions, no senior executives have been charged or imprisoned, and a collective government effort has not emerged. This stands in stark contrast to the failure of many savings and loan institutions in the late 1980s. In the wake of that debacle, special government task forces referred 1,100 cases to prosecutors, resulting in more than 800 bank officials going to jail.

SEC cautious ... taxpayer money in effect being used to pay for settlements.

bailout fed timgeithner andrewcuomo fraud misleading prosecution SEC FinancialCrisisInquiryCommission financialcrisis 2008 2007 settelment proptrading ethics henrypaulson benbernanke mortage analysis insight 2011
april 2011 by asterisk2a

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Senate report hits Goldman | City A.M.

arl Levin, chairman of the senate permanent subcommittee on investigations, tore into Goldman at a press briefing on his panel’s 639-page report, which is based on a review of tens of millions of documents over two years. Levin accused Goldman of profiting at clients’ expense as the mortgage market crashed in 2007. “In my judgment, Goldman clearly misled their clients and they misled Congress,” he said.
A Goldman Sachs spokesman said: “While we disagree with many of the conclusions of the report, we take seriously the issues explored by the subcommittee.”
The report also criticised Deutsche Bank and credit rating agencies Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s.
“Blame for this mess lies everywhere – from federal regulators who cast a blind eye, Wall Street bankers who let greed run wild, and members of Congress who failed to provide oversight,” said Republican senator and report co-author Tom Coburn.

goldmansachs FinancialCrisisInquiryCommission 2011 congress fraud greed greatrecession 2008 oversight foreclosure deutschebank moody's ratingagencies blamegame wallstreet report financialcrisis analysis
april 2011 by asterisk2a

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The Real Housewives of Wall Street | Rolling Stone Politics

Christy and her pal Susan launched their investment initiative called Waterfall TALF. [.//] But with an upfront investment of $15 million, they quickly received $220 million in cash from the Fed, most of which they used to purchase student loans and commercial mortgages. The loans were set up so that Christy and Susan would keep 100 percent of any gains on the deals, while the Fed and the Treasury (read: the taxpayer) would eat 90 percent of the losses. Given out as part of a bailout program ostensibly designed to help ordinary people by kick-starting consumer lending, the deals were a classic heads-I-win, tails-you-lose investment.

What started off as a targeted effort to stop the bleeding in a few specific trouble spots became a gigantic feeding frenzy. It was "free money for shit," says Barry Ritholtz, author of Bailout Nation. "It turned into 'Give us your crap that you can't get rid of otherwise.' "

TALF 2011 Fed wallstreet hostage bailout FinancialCrisisInquiryCommission TARP 2008 USA fraud creditcrunch financialcrisis liquidity insolvent insolvency
april 2011 by asterisk2a

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Alan Greenspan: The ultimate double agent | ForexLive

My pet Gordon Brown theory was that he was a descendant of Rob Roy or William Wallace and that he was secretly planning to bring down the UK from the inside. Funnily enough this theory never did take hold despite the mountains of evidence in my favour Now come the Greenspan conspiracy theories, like this in the Sydney Morning Herald, which state that Alan is in fact an old closet Libertarian who’s ultimate goal is the demise of the Fiat system. Well it’s more fun than reading some more RBA analysis!

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/uncle-sam-heading-closer-to-a-fresh-financial-meltdown-20110404-1cyil.html

gordonbrown alangreenspan conspiracy greatrecession financialcrisis 2008
april 2011 by asterisk2a

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YouTube - Charlie Rose Interviews Charles Ferguson on his documentary 'Inside Job'
presidency barackobama 2011 2012 FinancialCrisisInquiryCommission financialcrisis meltdown 2008 politics
april 2011 by asterisk2a

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YouTube - Barofsky Says U.S. `Hopelessly Naive' on Bank Bailouts

TARP Inspector - Neil Barofsky, special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, talks about the performance of and outlook for TARP.- Banks got w TARP major advantage - home owners and business owners and unemployed either let down or in the case of the latter scrutinized- Moral Hazard - TARP was a present from Hank and Ben; had no to very little strings attached in order to guide banking

barofsky TARP henrypaulson benbernanke 2011 fraud banking transparency presidency barackobama FinancialCrisisInquiryCommission finance financialcrisis 2008 meltdown abuse policy
march 2011 by asterisk2a

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Commodities Regulator Gary Gensler Pleads for More Money - NYTimes.com

Mr. Gensler, in testimony before a House appropriations subcommittee, called the Commodity Futures Trading Commission “a good investment for the American public, overseeing vast markets with a relatively small staff.” Despite the nation’s budget deficit, Mr. Gensler said his agency needed a budget increase “because, as we saw in 2008, without oversight of the swaps market, billions of taxpayer dollars may be at risk.”
Although the White House agrees with Mr. Gensler, Congressional Republicans are eying severe cuts to the agency’s funding.

CFTC 2011 Dodd-Frank politics republicans reform regulation oversight budget FinancialCrisisInquiryCommission financialcrisis
march 2011 by asterisk2a

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Another Inside Job - NYTimes.com

That settlement is a “shakedown,” says Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama. The money banks would be required to allot to mortgage modification would be “extorted,” declares The Wall Street Journal. And the bankers themselves warn that any action against them would place economic recovery at risk.
All of which goes to confirm that the rich are different from you and me: when they break the law, it’s the prosecutors who find themselves on trial.

"held hostage"
the biggest obstacle to recovery isn’t the financial condition of major banks, which were bailed out once and are now profiting from the widespread perception that they’ll be bailed out again if anything goes wrong. It is, instead, the overhang of household debt combined with paralysis in the housing market. Getting banks to clear up mortgage debts — instead of stringing families along to extract a few more dollars — would help, not hurt, the economy.

fraud 2008 BofA banking power money WallStreet corruption FinancialCrisisInquiryCommission financialcrisis subprime settelment SEC CFTC Law politics abuse debtoverhang debt public private
march 2011 by asterisk2a

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Icahn Capital to Return Money to Outside Investors - NYTimes.com
financialcrisis hedgefunds 2008 2011 uncertainty volatility investment example future
march 2011 by asterisk2a

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Opening Bell: 02.17.11 Dealbreaker: A Wall Street Tabloid Business News Headlines and Financial Gossip

BofA Subpoenaed over Countrywide VIP Home Loans (Reuters)The subpoena is the latest in a two-year probe by U.S. Representative Daniel Issa, chairman of the committee, into Countrywide Financial Corp’s mortgage program that allegedly gave better loan terms and preferential treatment to allies of former Chief Executive Angelo Mozilo. Te program was known informally as the “Friends of Angelo” inside the mortgage lender.

Mozilo 2008 fraud politics lobby CountrywideFinancial financialcrisis
february 2011 by asterisk2a

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Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail? | Rolling Stone Politics

Rage Against the Money Machine Matt Taibbi is frustrated and angry at the lack of prosecutions stemming from the financial crisis: “The mental stumbling block, for most Americans, is that financial crimes don’t feel real; you don’t see the culprits waving guns in liquor stores or dragging coeds into bushes. But these frauds are worse than common robberies. They’re crimes of intellectual choice, made by people who are already rich and who have every conceivable social advantage, acting on a simple, cynical calculation: Let’s steal whatever we can, then dare the victims to find the juice to reclaim their money through a captive bureaucracy.”

politics corporatism corruption government fed fraud financialcrisis FinancialCrisisInquiryCommission law madoff 2011
february 2011 by asterisk2a

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Goldmans Tourre Shouldnt Face SEC Lawsuit, His Lawyers Say - Bloomberg

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s lawsuit against Fabrice Tourre should be thrown out, lawyers for the Goldman Sachs Group Inc. trader accused of misleading investors in a product linked to subprime mortgages told a federal judge. Andrew Rhys Davies, Tourre’s lawyer, said yesterday that the SEC is trying to circumvent a U.S. Supreme Court ruling issued in June, Morrison v. National Australia Bank, that limits the reach of civil claims for acts occurring outside the U.S. “The SEC is attempting to do an end run around Morrison,” Rhys Davies told U.S. District Judge Barbara Jones in Manhattan.

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Banking is International, But not Law.

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february 2011 by asterisk2a

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Planet Money's Toxic Asset : NPR

A short film about the life and death of Toxie, Planet Money's toxic asset.

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february 2011 by asterisk2a

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Buffett Tells Crisis Commission It's Powerless to Stop `Too Big to Fail' - Bloomberg

Buffett Tells FCIC It’s Powerless to Stop `Too Big to Fail (Bloomberg)“You will always have institutions that are too big to fail, and sometimes they will fail,” Buffett, 80, told the FCIC in a May 26 interview, according to a recording released by the panel yesterday. “We still have them now. We’ll have them after your commission report.”

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february 2011 by asterisk2a

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Thain Says He Should've `Grabbed, Shaken' Paulson to Aid Lehman - Bloomberg

Banking chiefs weren’t “strong enough” during 2008 meetings in insisting that then-Treasury Department Secretary Henry Paulson reverse his opposition to a U.S.-led rescue of Lehman, Thain told the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, according to audio files released yesterday.

“We collectively, the group of us, we should have just grabbed them and shaken them and said, ‘Look, you guys cannot do this,’” Thain told FCIC interviewers in a Sept. 17, 2010, interview. “Allowing Lehman to go bankrupt was the single biggest mistake of the financial crisis.”

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february 2011 by asterisk2a

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Gary Gensler, a Gung-Ho Derivatives Regulator - NYTimes.com

How would you describe the response you’ve received from industry lobbyists?
A.It’s professional. It’s active. We’ve had about 475 meetings in five months. And since the lobbyists haven’t found us on the weekends (usually), you can do the arithmetic. It’s quite a bit.
I will say this: In America, large institutions have a great deal more resources than the investor advocates. If you looked at those 475 meetings — and we’re posting every one of them on our Web site — 90-plus percent are probably larger institutions or corporations.
Q.Can your staff handle the load?
A.This agency, just this past year, got back to the size it was in 1999. We think we need about 400 more people — even though we’re taking on markets that are seven times the size of what we currently regulate and far more complicated. So we’re going to continue to make the case. Even though our great nation has a very large deficit, this is the best investment for taxpayer money.

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february 2011 by asterisk2a

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The top ten real causes of the crisis | City A.M.
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february 2011 by asterisk2a

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When Irish Eyes Are Crying | Business | Vanity Fair

September 29, 2008, that Morgan Kelly became the startled object of popular interest. The stocks of the three main Irish banks, Anglo Irish, A.I.B., and Bank of Ireland, had fallen by between a fifth and a half in a single trading session, and a run on Irish bank deposits had started. The Irish government was about to guarantee all the obligations of the six biggest Irish banks. The most plausible explanation for all of this was Morgan Kelly’s narrative: the Irish economy had become a giant Ponzi scheme and the country was effectively bankrupt. But it was so starkly at odds with the story peddled by Irish government officials and senior Irish bankers—that the banks merely had a “liquidity” problem and that Anglo Irish was “fundamentally sound”—that the two could not be reconciled. The government had a report thrown together by Merrill Lynch, which declared that “all of the Irish banks are profitable and well capitalised.” ...

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february 2011 by asterisk2a

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Fed Lending Benefited Banks Far and Wide - NYTimes.com

The Fed data showed that the biggest recipient of taxpayer assistance was, naturally, Citigroup. It was followed closely by Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch and Bank of America. Goldman Sachs was also a large beneficiary during the darkest moments of 2008.
Remember that the Wall Street firms were imperiled by their excessive use of borrowed money, which generated huge paydays when the cost of those funds was cheap and the values of the assets they were buying were rising at a steady clip. After the bubble burst and financing evaporated, the firms were able to tap into a lending program created by the Fed in mid-March 2008 after Bear Stearns collapsed. It was called the Primary Dealer Credit Facility.
The program allowed firms to borrow at low interest rates — ranging from 3.25 percent when the program began to 0.5 percent when the last loan was made in May 2009. The firms had to post various securities as collateral when they borrowed, and some of those securities were risky indeed.

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december 2010 by asterisk2a

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Fed May Be `Central Bank of the World' After UBS, Barclays Aid - Bloomberg
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december 2010 by asterisk2a

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@StockTwits with Howard Lindzon and Jim Rogers Live Finance Video Network | StockTwits TV

Jim Rogers et al can't believe that some people are not on jail.
And only Ponzi Schemes get busted and jailed.

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november 2010 by asterisk2a

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Forecaster Ian Shepherdson Sees an End to Economic Gloom - NYTimes.com

HERE are the data that have caught his eye. At this time last year, the total stock of commercial and industrial bank credit was $1.32 trillion; it was contracting at a blistering pace — about $7 billion a week. Indeed, between the peak of such lending in October 2008 and the trough in June of this year, total commercial and industrial bank credit fell by one-quarter.

Now, this contraction has stopped. The data have recently turned positive and should continue climbing, albeit slowly. “Getting to zero is not bullish at the moment,” Mr. Shepherdson said. “I would want to see commercial and industrial credit growing reasonably strongly to an outright positive four, five or six billion dollars a week. The story is really that the credit contraction seems to be coming to an end.”

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november 2010 by asterisk2a

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Op-Ed Columnist - The Mortgage Morass - NYTimes.com

Lawrence Summers, then the Treasury secretary, declared that the keys to avoiding financial crisis were “well-capitalized and supervised banks, effective corporate governance and bankruptcy codes, and credible means of contract enforcement.” By implication, these were things the Asians lacked but we had.

The accounting scandals at Enron and WorldCom dispelled the myth of effective corporate governance. These days, the idea that our banks were well capitalized and supervised sounds like a sick joke. And now the mortgage mess is making nonsense of claims that we have effective contract enforcement — in fact, the question is whether our economy is governed by any kind of rule of law.

Horror stories have been proliferating, like the case of the Florida man whose home was taken even though he had no mortgage.

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october 2010 by asterisk2a

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YouTube - (1/4) Lobbykratie - Die inoffizielle Macht
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september 2010 by asterisk2a

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Ex-Time Warner boss apologises for 'worst deal of the century' - Americas, World - The Independent

Ex-Time Warner boss apologises for 'worst deal of the century'
Jerry Levin encourages banking chiefs to follow his lead after admitting AOL blunder

"I'm really very sorry about the pain and suffering and loss caused," Mr Levin told CNBC television.

"I take responsibility. It wasn't the board. It wasn't my colleagues at Time Warner. It wasn't the bankers or the lawyers – and there were a lot of them... I am not going to blame any predecessors or successors. I helped pick them and I have great respect for them," he said. "I presided over the worst deal of the century, apparently, and it is time for those involved in companies to stand up and say, 'You know what, I am solely responsible for it, I was the CEO, I was in charge'."

who turned Citigroup into the largest US bank and then left in 2006, just before losses from sub-prime mortgage

an angry Mr Weill had defended his record and said one of his biggest mistakes had been "recommending Chuck Prince" to be his successor.

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may 2010 by asterisk2a

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