dimelab: year's Topic in The Credit Debacle Catalog at Feed-Adept

year's Topic in The Credit Debacle Catalog

year's end (1); year's financial crisis (1); year's hot money (1); year's market meltdown (1); years s Crashes (1).

Thu 2010-08-19 16:04 EDT

The AIG Bailout Scandal

The government's $182 billion bailout of insurance giant AIG should be seen as the Rosetta Stone for understanding the financial crisis and its costly aftermath. The story of American International Group explains the larger catastrophe not because this was the biggest corporate bailout in history but because AIG's collapse and subsequent rescue involved nearly all the critical elements, including delusion and deception. These financial dealings are monstrously complicated, but this account focuses on something mere mortals can understand--moral confusion in high places, and the failure of governing institutions to fulfill their obligations to the public. Three governmental investigative bodies have now pored through the AIG wreckage and turned up disturbing facts--the House Committee on Oversight and Reform; the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, which will make its report at year's end; and the Congressional Oversight Panel (COP), which issued its report on AIG in June. The five-member COP, chaired by Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren, has produced the most devastating and comprehensive account so far. Unanimously adopted by its bipartisan members, it provides alarming insights that should be fodder for the larger debate many citizens long to hear--why Washington rushed to forgive the very interests that produced this mess, while innocent others were made to suffer the consequences. The Congressional panel's critique helps explain why bankers and their Washington allies do not want Elizabeth Warren to chair the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau...

AIG bailout scandal.

Fri 2010-07-16 18:09 EDT

A Blistering Ride Through Hell: Key Property Charts to Make Sense of This Week's Housing Numbers and This Year's Financial Crisis - Michael David White -- Seeking Alpha

Michael David White

Housing inventory rising, housing price versus housing inventory may imply dramatic price falls; deleveraging is a myth; mortgage bubble; negative equity; forecasts total fall in property prices about half over, another 20% to go.

Blistering Ride; hell; Key property charts; make sense; Michael David White; Seeking Alpha; Week's Housing Numbers; year's financial crisis.

The Guardian World News Wed 2009-11-25 10:31 EST

What was really behind the crash?

John Cassidy

In an exclusive extract from his new book, John Cassidy explains why the huge salaries of Wall Street bosses created a culture that helped trigger the financial crisis...In the wake of last year's crash, even some top bankers have conceded that Wall Street remuneration schemes lead to excessive risk-taking...But without direct government involvement, the effort to reform Wall Street compensation won't survive the next market upturn. For although the financial sector as a whole has an interest in controlling rampant short-termism and irresponsible risk-taking, individual firms have an incentive to hire away star traders from any rivals that have introduced pay limits. Compensation reforms, therefore, are bound to break down. In this case, as in many others, the only way to reach a socially desirable outcome is to enforce compliance. And the only body that can do that is the government.

Crash; Guardian World News; really.

Blog entry Sat 2009-09-19 13:28 EDT

The Angelides Commission: Tell America What Happened

Robert L. Borosage

Today the new Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, modeled after the New Deal-era Pecora Commission, begins its investigation into possible misconduct by the financial sector causing last year's market meltdown...We are pleased that the Financial Crisis Commission is coming together, under the leadership of chair Phil Angelides...the Commission should aspire to be the modern day version of the Senate Banking Hearings in the 1930s that came to be named after the chief counsel, Ferdinand Pecora...The Angelides Commission -- if it fearlessly lays out the facts, exposes the excesses, the deformed incentives, the frauds and crimes, that are at the root of the current crisis has the potential of playing a similar role to that of Pecora.

Angelides Commission; blog entry; happened; tell America.

Asia Times Online Sun 2009-09-13 10:25 EDT

THE BEAR'S LAIR : Possible October surprises

Martin Hutchinson

The inflation that might be expected in the United States from unprecedented expansionary monetary policies has failed to appear, while huge budget deficits have yet to produce higher interest rates. Far from being signs of a new economic paradigm, this merely means new bubbles are forming...Commodities and gold therefore are the destination of this year's hot money and are forming the new bubble...a fair-sized bubble has developed in the T-bond market...however...a modest resurgence in US inflation or difficulty in a long dated T-bond auction could cause confidence to flee the Treasury bond market and yields to leap uncontrollably upwards...the long-term costs of excessively cheap money are beginning to be seen in the US economy itself. By allowing money to remain so cheap for so long, and by running incessant payments deficits, the United States has surrendered the advantage of its superior long-established capital base, narrowing its capital cost advantage over emerging markets and exporting that capital to countries with less profligate approaches. Huge budget deficits, themselves worsening the trade deficit, merely export yet more US capital to the surplus nations. That makes it inevitable that the years ahead, in which the United States will no longer enjoy a capital advantage over its lower-wage competitors, will see highly unpleasant declines in US living standards.

Asia Times Online; BEAR'S LAIR; Possible October surprises.