financial bailout
Goldman Thrives while CIT Dives
There were some big stories in the bizarre world of finance this week, and decent profit reports from some of America’s largest companies. The good news about earnings helped promote a sense of calm, as thoughts about last year’s financial crisis faded into distant memory. I will focus today on two developments that I [...]
The Debt Bomb Boogie
Yes, this country’s financial situation is abysmal. The federal deficit is set to hit $1.7 trillion for the 2009 fiscal year, hovering around 13 percent of GDP. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) predicts that the total federal budget could reach $13 trillion by the fall of 2010. The NY Times reported that the CBO puts [...]
Watch Out for the Big Bad Fed
While the Iranian theocracy cracked down on mass dissent after they rigged the latest presidential election, the Obama administration announced major plans to revamp the regulatory architecture of the financial services industry. It seems as if the developments in Iran greatly overshadowed the American public’s interest in how the financial markets will operate in the [...]
What the Financial Pundits are Missing
As the stock market reaches positive territory for the year, and the pundits who were teetering on the ledges of their over-priced office suites scream for joy that the worst is over, the very real problems that face the U.S. economy have not gone away – they are just being ignored.
I found several useful articles [...]
Bank Stress Tests are a Complete Farce!
Let’s hear it for the bankers! They only need another $75 billion in extra capital by November in order to stay alive. Nice work, boys! The NY Times reported today that ten of the nineteen bank holding companies subjected to regulators’ stress tests, the banks deemed “too big to fail,” will need to raise extra [...]
The Culture of Debt
I have something that I’m quite proud of to share with you this afternoon. It’s an essay called The Culture of Debt, and I wrote it about three years ago. At the time, the credit bubble was still growing, feeding a boom in real estate and fueling all manner of mindless consumption. I wrote this [...]
The World According to Gordon Brown
It was all smiles at the conclusion of the G20 summit held in London yesterday. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown babbled on about the emergence of a new world order – which will be composed of the very same self-serving politicians that he was bickering with just a few hours before this laughable announcement of [...]
Timmy’s Big Week
U.S. Treasury secretary Timothy Geithner had a very big week. In February, the panicked American public and their clueless representatives in Congress saw a timid and overwhelmed Geithner fumbling and bumbling his way through a vaguely defined plan to rescue the banking system from all of the toxic securities purchased – with borrowed funds – [...]
Where did America’s Wealth go?
Where did America’s wealth go? That is the question being asked from Washington state to Washington DC. The Federal Reserve reported yesterday that U.S. household net worth plummeted by $11.2 trillion, equivalent to a loss of close to 18 percent, during 2008. Household net worth – which is assets owned minus liabilities owed – of [...]
Feds Toss More Money Down AIG Hole
American International Group (AIG) made history this week by declaring a $61.7 billion loss for the fourth quarter of 2008. That equates to $22.95 per share, compare that to a stock price of less than a buck, (it was quoted at $0.34 today) and one can see the absurdity of our nation’s current financial situation. [...]
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