Tag: President Obama

Weekend wrap-up: 2/6 to 2/10/12

| February 11, 2012 | 0 Comments

Here’s what you may have missed on the Finance Addict this week. Also check out our GIF of the Week after the jump!

  1. Risky repos rear their head and threaten us all. Looks like there’s a storm brewing in the U.S. repo markets.
  2. Why Dodd-Frank has already failed. Here’s why Dodd-Frank is irredeemably flawed and won’t do enough to protect our economy from troubled financial institutions.
  3. The Super Bowl & general ad spend: bullish indicator? Super Bowl commercials, and ad spending in general, are great economic indicators since ad budgets are usually the first to go in a downturn.
  4. The saga of Maiden Lane II. Nothing better captures the bailout dilemma than the saga of Maiden Lane II.
  5. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to really leave the stage? Can we realistically abolish Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s central role in the housing market? What are the implications?
  6. Of fallen angels and demons restored. Alan Greenspan is a fallen angel. Who else do you think will go from hero to zero, and vice versa, when we look back again?

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Risky repos rear their head and threaten us all

| February 7, 2012 | 2 Comments

Looks like there’s a storm brewing in the U.S. repo markets.

It figures: profit-center banks have every motivation to stay one step ahead of the regs and the pols. Since the gamekeepers have now gotten around to looking at proprietary trading and bringing derivatives onto exchanges, you can almost bet your first-born that the next crisis will be in neither one of these areas but someplace else entirely different. Continue Reading

Weekend wrap-up: 1/30 to 2/3/12

| February 4, 2012 | 0 Comments

Here’s all the great stuff you missed on the Finance Addict this week. And also check out our GIF of the Week after the jump!

  1. Banks to face the RICO Act for robosigning credit cards? While the RICO Act’s usually exercised against organized crime rings, it may be used against banks who’ve supported credit card robosigning.
  2. Germany plays hopscotch over the rubicon. Angela Merkel of Germany is blithely hopscotching over a point of no return.
  3. Shareholder rights again under attack. What will the landscape look like if Carlyle Group wins its battle to erode shareholder rights?
  4. Are we going to own AIG forever? Here’s the thing: AIG is not so sure that we’ll ever get our $51 billion back.
  5. We don’t need no education. Another view of how the banks, the politicians and the press work together to keep in place a status quo favorable to banking interests.
  6. Sometimes the “long-term” never comes. It’s easy to forget the extraordinary, unprecedented amount of assistance being lent to the economy by the central banks.
  7. They *do* exist. A regulator who’s resistant to corporate lobbying? Hallelujah!
  8. Who really pays for the things we love? Many will watch the Superbowl and use our iPhones to share the experience. But if we’re honest we’ll take our wings with a side of guilt.

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Are we going to own AIG forever?

| January 30, 2012 | 2 Comments

Last week I showed you exactly how TARP’s Special Master for Compensation decided to continue paying millions in compensation to the chiefs of bailed out companies. (Short answer: Tim Geithner talked a good game about being tough on pay but then flip-flopped at the first opportunity.)

But here’s the other interesting thing about this saga: AIG’s not so sure that we’ll ever get our $51 billion back. Continue Reading

Weekend wrap-up: 1/23 to 1/27/12

| January 28, 2012 | 0 Comments

Here were the Finance Addict’s top stories this week. Plus, check out our GIF of the Week after the jump!

  1. Davos shocked to hear that poor people exist. When you start hearing the language of Huxley and Orwell on the slopes of the Swiss Alps, then you know that something has shifted.
  2. Trust in business and politics reaches critical point. We don’t really trust corporations or government. Can we reverse this? And if not, then what?
  3. Germany seeks permission to drown. Germany and France want to ignore a key lesson from the crisis and play fast and loose with Basel III.
  4. More tangled tales from TARP. As the Special “Pay Master” for TARP, is Ken Feinberg a legal laureate gone rogue? Or is he being railroaded?
  5. A White House nudge towards strategic default? A 2008 memo to President-Elect Barack Obama contains a counterintuitive endorsement for strategic default.
  6. Trusted advice? Hardly. Dale Westhoff is the Global Head of Structured Product Research at Credit Suisse and apparently the firm’s chief propagandist.
  7. Saying “No” to the yes-men on fiscal stimulus. Does recent research from Virginia Tech shed light on why the fiscal stimulus debate went wrong? Continue Reading
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