Today, Ben Bernanke, the head of the Federal Reserve, testified before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission on Too Big to Fail banks and the general financial collapse. (Find Bernanke’s prepared testimony in a PDF here.) But he is getting the most attention for a comment on housing, where he More…
Sudeep Reddy of The Wall Street Journal interviews James Bullard, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis — a voting member of the Federal Open Market Committee, which sets the nation’s short-term interest rate.
Bullard says that the Fed might start selling off mortgage-backed securities — it More…
The Lehman Brothers bankruptcy examiner’s report is the gift that just keeps on giving to critics of the administration, the bank bailout and the current efforts at financial market reform. Today, Ryan Grim of the Huffington Post reports that Tim Geithner, already under fire for encouraging Goldman More…
Bloomberg’s long-standing Freedom of Information Act request for a look at who in the financial system took part in the Fed’s now-secret $2 trillion loan program has been granted by a second court on the basis that there exists no exemption to FOIA rules for the continued economic More…
The extraordinarily comprehensive bankruptcy examiner’s report on Lehman Brothers is the gift that keeps on giving to financial reform advocates, above and beyond even the revelations that Lehman was cooking its books and no one noticed for years. According to Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism, the report is More…
One of the ongoing criticisms of the Federal Reserve is that, despite its expertise and mandate, it presided over the failing institutions and didn’t understand enough about the complex transactions that triggered this financial crisis — not to mention that it hardly has the best interests of the consumers of More…
Recent media reports that Citigroup had discovered a potential way around regulations forbidding it from abusive rate hikes sparked more than a public outcry; it convinced Citi’s competitors to follow suit. Since the regulations are set to take effect Monday, card companies are scrambling to inform customers about More…
Although the federal government is closed due to snow, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke decided not to wait for today’s congressional hearing to be rescheduled to release his statement. In it, he pointed out something exceedingly obvious: The Fed’s actions to keep short-term interest rates at zero are going More…
Gretchen Morgenson and Louise Story’s New York Times piece yesterday was a thorough explanation of Goldman Sachs’ machinations that contributed to the collapse of AIG and the government’s perceived need to jump in and pay for everything without negotiating prices.
But unless you’re well-versed in the modern minutiae More…
Two messages worth noting from Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s interview with CNBC yesterday: (1) Although he was the head of the New York Federal Reserve in late 2008, he had nothing to do with the decision to pay $62 billion to Goldman Sachs and others through More…
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