finance industry

Appearing on Wall Street today, President Obama accused some of the nation’s financial institutions of “misreading” the economy’s nascent recovery, and urged Congress to pass strict new banking regulations to prevent the industry’s “reckless behavior” from spurring another economic collapse.
We will not go back to the days of reckless behavior and unchecked excess that [...]

Just when you thought it was a tough time to be a banker comes this heartwarming tale of a bank executive effectively squatting in a $12 million Malibu foreclosure. From The Associated Press:
A Wells Fargo executive who oversees foreclosed properties hosted parties and spent long summer weekends in a $12 million Malibu beach house, moving [...]

Here’s a fascinating exchange between Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Financial Services subpanel on housing, and Mary Coffin, executive vice president of Wells Fargo’s mortgage servicing division, during yesterday’s hearing to examine how effectively the administration’s voluntary mortgage modification program is preventing foreclosures. (Not very, it turns out.) The [...]

The percentage of homeowners either in foreclosure or late on a mortgage payment topped 13 percent nationwide in the second quarter of 2009, the Mortgage Bankers Association reported today. The figure is the highest since the MBA began keeping records 37 years ago.
And the trouble is expected only to get worse.

Even as some of Congress’ recently enacted credit card reforms go into effect today, a New York Times editorial reminds Washington that the banks are still cheating customers with overdraft fees charged to debit card users. These fees, which average $27 a pop, are slapped on consumers when purchases exceed account balances, regardless [...]

Less than two weeks after Goldman Sachs posted record quarterly profits, some congressional lawmakers are wondering if the Wall Street giant isn’t taking dangerous risks in its investment strategy — risks similar to those that led to the recent financial collapse.
In a letter today to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, 10 House lawmakers are asking [...]

Nearly three months after the Senate killed a House-passed proposal allowing homeowners to stave off foreclosure through bankruptcy, some upper-chamber Democrats are wondering if it isn’t time to revisit the issue.
Leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee, not satisfied that mortgage lenders and servicers have done enough to prevent foreclosure voluntarily, have scheduled a cramdown hearing [...]

Congressional Democrats — the same Democrats who delayed implementation of their credit card reform bill for nine months — just didn’t anticipate that the country’s credit card issuers would race to exploit that postponement by hiking rates in the meantime.
Or did they?
In a letter today to the Federal Reserve and other key financial regulators, Senate [...]

We just put up a piece about how the Democrats’ legislative efforts to make credit cards more consumer friendly have been delayed, likely until July 2010, when new consumer protections crafted by the Federal Reserve will be installed anyway. It was probably inevitable that the banks would try to cash in on current practices as [...]

Tonight, President Obama is reiterating his plan for getting the country’s economy back on track, the emphasis again on investments in health care, energy, education and infrastructure — the tangible, bricks- and-mortar types of things that are decidedly not reliant on housing bubbles and credit default swaps.