“Better Late Than Never” Dept.No, I’m not wishing that the stock market goes down. But at least it’s going down today for a “good” reason: it’s being pulled down by a sharp drop in the price of Goldman Sachs stock, which may now be charged criminally (it is already the subject of civil fraud charges)....Read More
Post’s Pearlstein Gets It Very Wrong Much of [yesterday’s Senate] hearing focused on how Goldman went from having billions of dollars of exposure to the subprime mortgage market in the first half of 2006 to posting big profits from the implosion in that same market by the second half of 2007. The more benign way...Read More
“Distribute?!?” How About, “Palm Off?” Dis-tri-bute: 1 : to divide among several or many : apportion2 a : to spread out so as to cover something: scatter; b : to give out or deliver especially to members of a group. –Merriam-Webster dictionary According to The New York Times, as early as 2006, “company email messages...Read More
Borrow at 0%, Lend at 3%, Make Billions Is it customary, when someone is charged with fraud and awaiting trial, to leave them in possession of the victim’s credit cards, and, indeed, to continue to allow them to spend and gamble the victim’s money? In the corporate arena, apparently the answer is “yes.” U.S. vs....Read More
The Too-Big-To-Fail Debate Advocates for cutting so-called “too big to fail” financial institutions down to (less threatening) size — I’m one of them — have rightly focused on the systemic risk such entities pose; the unfair, distorting effects on competition such a policy causes, due to the implicit federal guaranties backing TBTF companies (which drives...Read More
Cutting Wall Street’s Gordian Knot Call me a skeptic when it comes to financial reform. If health care consumed a solid year of legislative maneuvering, how much time will it take to carefully consider the various and sundry proposals to rein in Wall Street, which is infinitely more complicated? Which is kind of the point,...Read More
