What's in a name? Isn't a Corporate representative regardless of party smell as sweet? In a very obvious move for political survival, Arlen Specter is going to switch parties for his 2010 Senate Run.
This is just astounding. Specter introduced, let them write, pushed and helped pass so much lobbyist written legislation it's enough to make one sick.
Déjà vu anyone? The financial press is confessing to their complete miss of the financial crisis.
Doesn't this sound all too familiar, like the reporting leading up to the Iraq war?
All journalists out there, perhaps it's time to stop reading corporate press kits, interviewing CEOs, being dazzled by power and money and doing your homework from first principles.
As a blogger we all know just how easy it is to rewrite press kits and post them as stories. Turns out that is what you reported on, fiction. Economic fiction.
What is more amusing, while financial journalists admit their failure and show acts of contrition, they are doing the same damn behavior right now.
Treasury floated (could be testing the waters) a new program that provides new incentives to second lienholders. During the mortgage lending boom "no-downpayment" loans and "piggyback" loans were aggressively pushed. Obviously, these second mortgage loans were to compensate for no-downpayment or low downpayment. At the time, mortgage lenders didn't care about adding a second mortgage lien on residential property because real estate prices "always" go up. Then reality set in.
But those loans, which are attached to about half of all troubled mortgages, have been an obstacle to efforts to alleviate the housing crisis. That's because borrowers who are trying to get their primary mortgage modified at a lower monthly payment need the permission of the company holding the second mortgage.
One year and two administrations into the bailout, Mr. Geithner is perhaps the single person most identified with the enormous checks the government has written.
The article lists as Geithner's associates and friends an insider who's who of culprits who made the financial sector mess in the first place:
Geithner even lobbied to reduce capital requirements of banks.
Attached as a file is an update from the Federal Reserve of activities on extraordinary lending.
Due to travel and being out of town, I have not reviewed this report in detail, which is the reason this report is posted in an Instapopulist. I know our writers and readers will pour all over this and write up a blog post or at least comment with their insights.
The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (the “Board”) is providing the following updates concerning the lending facilities established by the Board under section 13(3) of the Federal Reserve Act (12 U.S.C. § 343). This
report is the third periodic report filed by the Board pursuant to section 129(b) of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (“EESA”) and provides an
update concerning all of the loans and lending facilities authorized by the Board under section 13(3) since March 1, 2008, that are outstanding. These facilities are
the:
Iceland kicked out those free market, rhetoric loving conservatives which brought the country to it's knees in a new election:
With about a third of the final vote counted late Saturday, it seemed that the country’s leftist caretaking government would be formally voted into power, with the Social Democrats projected to gain 22 seats and their partners, the Left-Greens, appearing to gain 13 seats in the 63-seat Parliament. The conservative Independent Party, ousted after a wave of demonstrations in January, was projected to gain just 14 seats with less than 23 percent of the vote, down considerably from its total in 2007. Final results are to be announced on Sunday.
It appears those responsible for creating Iceland's financial disaster are called The New Vikings. Well, well, rape and pillage they did and Iceland is paying the price.
Will Goldman Sachs be a case study in 'Moral Hazards'? Goldman is increasing its risk-taking at a time when taxpayer dollars are still in its coffers.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc., unbowed by the securities industry’s worst year since the Great Depression, increased its trading bets at the fastest rate on Wall Street.
Interesting time to increase your risk. Here is some perspective on the amount of risk.
Goldman Sachs’s so-called value-at-risk, the amount the New York-based bank estimates it could lose from trading in a day, jumped 22 percent to $240 million in the first quarter, twice what Morgan Stanley stands to lose, company reports show. VaR climbed 2.8 percent in the same period at JPMorgan Chase & Co. and dropped 14 percent at Credit Suisse Group AG.
You read it right, a negative 5% interest rate. The financial times is reporting an internal study by the Federal reserve came to this conclusion:
The ideal interest rate for the US economy in current conditions would be minus 5 per cent, according to internal analysis prepared for the Federal Reserve’s last policy meeting.
The analysis was based on a so-called Taylor-rule approach that estimates an appropriate interest rate based on unemployment and inflation.
A central bank cannot cut interest rates below zero. However, the staff research suggests the Fed should maintain unconventional policies that provide stimulus roughly equivalent to an interest rate of minus 5 per cent.
A couple of interesting EI type of reports. The first, the LIBOR rates are now BLB - before Lehman Brothers.
The Libor-OIS premium that indicates banks’ reluctance to lend to each other fell to 0.87 percentage point on April 24, the lowest level since before Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. collapsed in September, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Companies have raised a record $468 billion in U.S. bond sales this year. Prices of the most senior portions of mortgage bonds backed by prime U.S. jumbo loans have climbed 24 percent in the past five weeks, according to London-based Barclays Capital.
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