It's two decades too late, and its far from a done deal, but the days of Too-Big-To-Fail appear to be coming to an end.
(Reuters) - A council that includes the U.S. Treasury Secretary would help set policy for dealing with troubled financial firms under White House plans to deal with the "too big to fail" problem, CNBC television said on Monday citing sources.
Chicago Fed National Activity Index was released today and the headlines will surely blare that the economy is moving towards pre-recessionary levels.
Myself, I want to amplify there are two indexes, the first is this months national economic activity index and then the CFNAI-MA3, which is a 3 month moving average of the CFNAI. The monthly index has statistical noise, so the moving average is the number cited.
The September 2009 3 month moving average implies economic recovery. Anything above -0.70 is good.
1) American capitalism can be characterized by a complete lack of accountability; and
2) WTF!?! Where was the Office of Thrift Supervision?
The articles leads off with a story of potential misleading public statements from Kerry Killinger while CEO of WaMu:
On Sept. 10, 2007, Washington Mutual CEO Kerry Killinger stood before an audience of analysts and money managers and assured them the Seattle-based thrift would come out of the housing slump stronger than ever.
WaMu, Killinger told the Lehman Brothers conference, had tightened its lending standards, could access plenty of cash, and was "picking and choosing carefully" when it came to making new loans.
consolidated debt of $21 billion and consolidated assets of $20.1 billion as of June 30 in Chapter 11 documents filed today in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Delaware.
The economic crisis has the country flailing.
That's not a controversial statement. Since early 2008 the federal government has been trying various, and expensive methods, of jump-starting the economy and propping up the housing market. Since December 2007 the Federal Reserve has created an alphabet soup of programs to stabilize the credit markets.
So far all of these attempts to stabilize the economy have had mixed results at best. Trillions of dollars have been spent and yet the economy is still crippled. Why?
The problem is that the people in charge are asking the wrong question. They are asking, "How do we get back to where we were before this crisis?" The question they should be asking is, "How did this happen?"
Unless we understand what happened and why, we will never be able to fix the economy.
It's Friday Night! Party Time! Time to relax, put your feet up on the couch, lay back, and watch some detailed videos on economic policy!
Frontline has a must watch documentary on the woman who tried to warn on derivatives and the shadow banking system and the men who stopped her. Realize if she had prevailed the financial crisis probably never would have happened.
Goldman Sachs is still charging fees on interest rate swaps long after the actual bonds are sold. Nice business model! Fees on underlying assets which no longer exist.
New Jersey taxpayers are sending almost $1 million a month to a partnership run by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. for protection against rising interest costs on bonds that the state redeemed more than a year ago.
The most-densely populated U.S. state is making the payments under an agreement made during the administration of former Governor James E. McGreevey in 2003, when New Jersey’s Transportation Trust Fund Authority sold $345 million in auction-rate bonds whose yields fluctuated with short-term interest costs. The agency finances road and rail projects.
Reading government economic statistics is like listening to a used car salesman - his lies are usually of omission.
For example, look at today's news on unemployment.
There were more encouraging signs, with the number of people collecting long-term unemployment benefits dropping 98,000 to 5.92 million in the week ended Oct. 10, the latest week for which the data is available.
That was the lowest level since March and it was the first time that continuing claims fell below the 6 million mark since April.
It's Friday Night! Party Time! Time to relax, put your feet up on the couch, lay back, and watch some detailed videos on economic policy!
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