fed

Fed’s $1.6 Trillon Bet

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke spent his academic career studying the Great Depression. But this economic meltdown is uncharted territory. It turns out the Fed already guaranteed $650 billion even before Congress ok’d that $700-billion bailout.

A Plan for World (Comedy) Domination

Harry Shearer plans to buy up all the comedic talent in the world, one jokester at a time.

Obama on Fed Plan: “We Are All in This Together”

Sen. Barack Obama spoke out in more detail on the Fed-Treasury bailout plan on Friday, stressing that while the U.S. faces one of “the most serious financial crises in this nation’s history,” he backs a progressive approach, grounded in the reality that “we are all in this together.”
According to prepared remarks, Obama first stressed that [...]

No End to Bailout Nation

Brad Setser at Follow the Money gets it exactly right today: “It looks like the U.S. government’s no-bailout policy lasted all of two days.” Adding to that thought, The L.A. Times questions what becoming a bailout nation means for a new administration:
The situation is bound to raise thorny policy issues for the next president, [...]

The Decade of Moral Hazard is Over

If you feel like you’re trying to muddle through absorbing and understanding what happened on Wall Street, and why we are in the mess we’re in, this short video from the Financial Times might help clear things up.
Investment editor John Authers traces many of today’s problems back to the rescue of Long Term Capital Management [...]

Still Dancing Around the Credit Crunch On the Campaign Trail

As Ari Melber and Matt DeLong have reported on our site, both presidential candidates are keeping up their war of words over Wall Street’s financial crisis and the state of the nation’s economy. You might think that things have changed a lot since last week, when I pointed out that both candidates had been ignoring [...]