5 myths about Wall Street pay days

The financial crisis is now more than a year old, and Americans are still angry -- angry that the economy tanked, angry that they're out of work. But mostly, people seem outraged by Wall Street bonuses. Seeking to assuage that ire, the Obama administration's compensation czar, Kenneth Feinberg, last week announced plans to cut the pay of top executives at the seven companies receiving federal support through the Troubled Assets Relief Program. He has suggested that the cuts, which slashed pay

Move Along

Yves Smith has a very good post on how hard much of the mainstream media has fallen for the “everything is OK, go on with your lives” theme. She cites the Pew Research Center to show that media coverage of the financial crisis and recession has focused primarily on political battles – stimulus, bailouts, etc. – rather than on problems in the real economy. What’s more, economic coverage in general has fallen off since the stock market rebound earlier this year and the Obama administration’s “all

Smart guys in history: The Trillin debate

Author Calvin Trillin has really set something off with Wall Street Smarts, a brief and whimsical take on the downfall of Wall Street, published earlier this week in the New York Times. In brief, he argues that the smart guys caused the financial crisis, after flooding into Wall Street in the late 1980s/early 1990s....

Tony Blankley: Washington Is Nuts

By Tony Blankley Want to hear a real laugher? Despite the current disharmony in politics, there’s one policy on which all of Washington agrees. Republicans and Democrats, House and Senate, president and Congress all agree that after last fall’s financial crisis, the federal government has to regulate the financial industry more closely to protect our economy from risk of systemic financial collapse. Here’s the joke. As boom- and bust-prone as high finance always has been and remains, the gr

Misguided

Krugman:Consider first the current uproar over the declining international value of the dollar.The truth is that the falling dollar is good news. For one thing, it’s mainly the result of rising confidence: the dollar rose at the height of the financial crisis as panicked investors sought safe haven in America, and it’s falling again now that the fear is subsiding. And a lower dollar is good for U.S. exporters, helping us make the transition away from huge trade deficits to a more sustainable int

Top economist Obama ‘refused’ to fix bank system, now it’s too late

Daniel Tencer Raw Story Sunday, Oct 11th, 2009 The Obama administration “refused” to take meaningful steps to reform the banking system in the wake of last year’s financial crisis, and the opportunity to do so has now been missed, says a former chief economist for the International Monetary Fund. Simon Johnson told PBS’s Bill Moyers that he expects an even larger financial crisis to hit the United States in the coming years because the system was not fixed through reform, but rather t

The Securitization Boondoggle

MIKE WHITNEY Counterpunch Sunday, Oct 11th, 2009 The relentless financialization of the economy has resulted in a hybrid-system of credit expansion which depends on pools of loans sliced-and-diced into tranches and sold into the secondary market to yield-seeking investors. The process is called securitization and it lies at the heart of the current financial crisis. Securitization markets have grown exponentially over the last decade as foreign capital has flooded Wall Street due to the b

Elizabeth Warren Highlights Washington’s Losing Battle on Housing

Who in Washington will give you a straight answer? Elizabeth Warren. Who is Elizabeth Warren? Her Wikipedia bio reads, Elizabeth Warren (born 1949) is the Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where she teaches contract law, bankruptcy, and commercial law. In the wake of the 2008-9 financial crisis, she has also become the chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel created to oversee the U.S. banking bailout, formally known as the Troubled Assets Relief Program. In 2007

Asian markets mark mute Monday

Sensex, Sydney, Seoul finish lowerStock market in Asian region remained subdued for third session on Monday 5 October 2009, led by technology and mining companies, as economist Nouriel Roubini said share prices may drop and a report showed the US lost more jobs than estimated. New York University Professor Nouriel Roubini, who predicted the financial crisis, said stock and commodity markets might drop in coming months as the gradual pace of the economic recovery disappoints investors.On Wall Str

UK Telegraph — The World Bank is close to running out of money, its president, Robert Zoellick, has disclosed.

The Bank, whose job it is to support low-income countries, has had to hand out so much cash in the wake of the financial crisis that its resources could run dry within 12 months.Related Posts:Business Week — Do Fannie and Freddie Need a ‘Bad Bank?’Chris Cillizza: Do Democrats Have a Fundraising Problem?Bankers prepare for international increase in regulationGermany calls carbon tariffs “eco-imperialism”It May Be Outrageous, but Wall Street Pay Didn’t Cause This Crisis

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