Of course, financial conglomerates don't like this because if would expose more of the "smoke and mirror" earnings. And guess who may be coming to the rescue of the financial conglomerates?
The Federal Reserve intends to hire a veteran lobbyist as it seeks to counter skepticism in Congress about the central bank’s growing power over the U.S. financial system, people familiar with the matter said.
Linda Robertson currently handles government, community and public affairs at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and headed the Washington lobbying office of Enron Corp., the energy trading company that collapsed in 2002 after an accounting scandal. She was also an adviser to all three of the Clinton administration’s Treasury secretaries.
She is going to spruce up the Fed's image.
Right o. Just what we need, another millionaire lobbyist focused on image instead of substance.
There are so many people that have run out their unemployment benefits and have either:
Just stopped looking and aren't working
They had to take part time work
In these economic times of a prolonged recession, oops better get my words in order her, call it an economic down turn. Did the powers to be ever really say the R word. Did we hit enough quarters for them? I know for a long while they would take any positive growth, no matter if it was imperceptible, they took it just so they didn't count that quarter as negative.
"the Fed's new money has not been going to consumers in the form of full employment with rising wages to restore fallen demand, but instead is going only to debt-infested distressed institutions to allow them to deleverage from toxic debt. Thus deflation in the equity market (falling share prices) has been cushioned by newly issued money, while aggregate wage income continues to fall to further reduce aggregate demand.
Looks like ex-Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo is going to be doing the perp walk.
(AP) -- Federal regulators on Thursday charged Angelo Mozilo, the former chief executive of mortgage lender Countrywide Financial Corp., and two other company executives with civil fraud.
The Securities and Exchange Commission's civil lawsuit, filed in federal district court in Los Angeles, also accuses Mozilo of illegal insider trading.
...
Civil fraud charges also were filed against Countrywide's former chief operating officer David Sambol, 49, and ex-chief financial officer Eric Sieracki, 52.
Freddie Mac reported today that 30-year mortgage rates have hit 6-month highs.
(Bloomberg) -- Fixed U.S. mortgage rates jumped to the highest level this year, signaling the Federal Reserve’s plan to lower borrowing costs has stalled.
The average 30-year rate rose to 5.29 from 4.91 percent a week earlier, Freddie Mac, the McLean, Virginia-based mortgage buyer, said today in a statement.
...
U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is renting his home in Westchester County, New York, for $7,500 a month after failing to find a buyer, according to data on the Westchester-Putnam Multiple Listing Service Inc.
Geithner, 47, was trying to sell the brick and stucco Tudor-style home, the listing shows. The house on Maple Hill Drive has five bedrooms, about 3,600 square feet, and an eat-in kitchen with Siematic cabinetry and black granite countertops.
But I have a more serious question, how did Tim Geithner, supposedly a government official his entire career, afford a $1.6 million dollar home?
While this "Great Recession" highlights need for new social safety net, this need existed when U.S. accepted and promoted globalization. It is just that the "Great Recession" is making a bad situation worse.
Globalization has promised great things for everyone - lower cost products, more efficient international labor markets and economic growth. The problem is that with globalization there are winners and losers especially in U.S. The losers have been workers - particularly working class Americans. Globalization creates downward pressure on wages and salaries. Economists say that they have not been able to draw a connection because lower wages and increased globalization.
The man who made his bones about the Great Depression in writing his Princeton thesis is losing his intestinal fortitude. In his paper he summarizes that FDR could have solved the the Great Depression if only they had inflated the currency more.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said today that large U.S. budget deficits threaten financial stability and the government can’t continue indefinitely to borrow at the current rate to finance the shortfall.
Even Bill Gross is becoming a skeptic of late telling listeners to diversify away from the U$D before the banks do.
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