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Stewards of a Sinking Ship
The economy continued down its rough road in 2009, with any hope of a quick recovery dashed by a rising wave of foreclosures and unemployment. Banks reined in lending to consumers and businesses while Wall Street firms pulled down record profits and offered generous bonuses. Perhaps the biggest economic More…
1. Ben Bernanke
As the head of the Federal Reserve, Bernanke is perhaps the most central figure in the fight to stabilize the nation’s financial system. He has drawn widespread criticism from both the left and right for overstepping the bounds of government involvement in the financial system and failing to foresee and More…
5. Elizabeth Warren
As head of the Congressional Oversight panel for the increasingly controversial taxpayer bailout of Wall Street (the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP), Warren wasted few words in contending that Treasury wasn’t doing its job, that permanent loan modifications were failing, and that middle-class Americans were getting a bad deal. More…
2. Wells Fargo
As one of the nation’s largest home mortgage and small-business lenders — and an alleged participant in discriminatory lending practices — Wells Fargo is the face of big banks whose failure to return to pre-bailout lending levels and refusal to do substantive loan modifications More…
6. Lloyd Blankfein
Every statement uttered by the chairman of Goldman Sachs, from saying that Goldman did God’s work to alleging that inequality was a force for good, reinforced the public’s perception of an out-of-touch Wall Street that was rolling in cash while Main Street suffered.
4. Barney Frank
Rep. Frank (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, talked a good game about mortgage reform and financial regulatory overhaul, but some housing advocates ultimately perceived Frank as all talk and no action. Mortgage cramdown failed, loan modifications stalled and the big financial reform package was watered down early More…
3. Timothy Geithner
Once it became clear that failed insurance giant AIG got away with far more than it deserved in negotiations for its government bailout, led by Treasury Secretary Geithner, criticism mounted that Geithner — and much of the rest of Obama’s economic team — were holdovers from previous administrations who were More…
