Merrill Makes the Case for Nationalization

Merrill Lynch — the former Wall Street titan that was recently acquired by Bank of America — like most investment banks, typically pays about 50 percent of its revenue in compensation. The chart (after the jump) depicts Merrill’s revenue and compensation data since 2000 — and it More…

A Path to Economic Recovery

Last week’s horrendous jobs report actually understates the nastiness of the recession. Along with the 533,000 jobs lost in November, the government nearly doubled previous job-loss estimates for September and October, bringing total losses thus far in 2008 close to the 2 million mark. In short, we are More…

Volcker Signs On: A ‘True’ Conservative in the Obama Camp

The announcement that Paul A. Volcker is a key economic adviser to Sen. Barack Obama – cited by the Democratic presidential nominee during the last debate and appearing with him at a campaign event in Florida last week — was met with surprise in some More…

Fed’s $1.6 Trillon Bet

Amid the clamor over the crisis on Wall Street, the U.S. Treasury’s $700 billion Troubled Asset Rescue Program, or “TARP,” bill and the evolving collapse of the global banking system, little attention has been paid to the extraordinary credit extensions at the Federal Reserve. But these are now without parallel More…

Hyperventilating on the Bailout

Congress’s failure to pass the Bush administration’s financial plan has triggered a wave of scare commentary -– “financial Armageddon,” a leap “off the cliff” or “into the abyss,” the trigger for “the Depression of the 2010s.”

There have been good background analyses of the $700 bailout plan in both More…

Hopes Fade for ‘Clean’ Bailout Bill

The ‘clean’ bailout bill that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson Jr. sent to Congress over the weekend, is anything but ‘clean.’ It would allow the Treasury to pay up to $700 billion for whatever “troubled assets” — in the bill’s first draft “mortgage-related assets” — from whatever banks at whatever price More…

Paulson’s Plan Not a Resolution Trust Corp. Scenario

The stock market leaped giddily in late Thursday’s trading on rumors that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson Jr. is thinking of “a government-led plan that would bail out the banks in a Resolution Trust Corp.-type scenario,” in the words of the Wall Street Journal’s “MarketBeat” blog.

Yearnings for an “RTC-type More…

Why Paulson Blinked on AIG

After the extraordinary federal takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on Sept. 6, Treasury Sec. Henry Paulson Jr., Washington’s capo di tutti i capi on the credit crisis, drew a line in the sand with Lehman Bros. and Merrill Lynch. That makes the sudden federal takeover More…

McCain’s Economic Agenda

Sen. John McCain, the presumed Republican nominee, rose to national prominence in part by taking on his fellow Republicans, particularly on the disgraceful “K-Street” project — a conscious embrace of business lobbyists reminiscent of the Harding administration. More recently, he broke ranks with the More…

Obama’s Economic Agenda

Whether Americans choose Sen. Barack Obama or Sen. John McCain as the next president, the first term’s economic agenda is already largely determined. Whoever takes office five months from now will inherit a deep-frozen economy, comatose housing markets, rising unemployment, gasping banks, falling tax receipts and soaring debt. Today’s article More…