Now that there are only a few banks left that haven’t repaid their TARP funds — and many did so to get out from under Pay Czar Ken Feinberg’s pay-restricting thumb — and bonus season has passed, Feinberg has just a little time on his hands. The Wall Street Journal More…
A new ABC News poll asks what Americans have to say about the newest economic villains — banks — as they return to profitability well ahead of America’s burgeoning unemployed population. There are few surprises there: The vast majority of people don’t believe the banks have done enough More…
A new report from the Treasury Department — the last of its kind — shows that despite all the regulation-avoiding PR campaigns, new loans at the nine largest banks that still owe bailout funds to the government dropped by 35 percent in January.
The nine banks
For many people, payday lenders and check-cashing outfits are the scum of the financial-sector earth; they’re called usurious, compared to illegal loan sharks and may finally be subject to at least some federal regulation (if not enforcement). But G.D. at Post Bourgie has an More…
Less then a month after the announcement that the federal government was going to start an incentive program to encourage buyers and banks to sell houses at depressed values without foreclosures, David Streitfeld of The New York Times has the details — and they’re a little More…
Since George W. Bush took office, commercial banks have more than doubled their annual federal lobbying budgets, to great effect. In addition to securing a nearly industry-wide bailout in the wake of a financial crisis spurred by their own risky investments, banking lobbyists notched many successes in More…
As if it weren’t difficult enough to avoid being tricked by your credit card company into fees, higher interest rates and variable rates that only ever go up, Andrew Martin and Ron Lieber of The New York Times report on the aggressive campaign by your bank More…
Louis Uchitelle of The New York Times got many of the financial industry’s former (and current) titans to speak on the record about their support of the Volcker rule, and why it would be good for the banking industry and America. What he didn’t mention is that their support More…
In an early roll-out of what is likely to be part of the financial industry’s regulation-busting public relations strategy, JPMorgan Chase analysts issued a report stating that any government efforts to prevent future financial meltdowns will cost them money. Naturally, they have no intention of losing a cent More…
The latest political clamor over AIG, poised to combust next Wednesday at a House hearing on backdoor payments to banks that made risky deals with the company, centers on the Federal Reserve’s effort to conceal details of those payments. But senior officials, including Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, have so far More…
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