financial crisis

The subprime crisis certainly highlighted the need for American consumers to become more financially literate. But who defines financial literacy? And what makes someone an expert? Mike Konczal at Rortybomb asks these and other questions regarding financial literacy education — a subject TWI has also been looking into lately.
Did you know that since 2003, when [...]

As we noted on Wednesday, the House Financial Services Committee is in the midst of tackling financial regulatory reform, which has brought out the lobbyists in full force. Here’s just a small taste of the action so far: American Banker is reporting that the committee is close to carving out an exemption for community banks [...]

When is this ever going to end? Conservative lawmakers are seizing on ACORN’s troubles to once again go after the Community Reinvestment Act, an anti-redlining law that somehow became a scapegoat for the housing crisis last year, the AP reports.
The 1977 Community Reinvestment Act was intended to end redlining, a practice in which banks in [...]

Former President Bill Clinton now says that letting Lehman Bros. fail was a mistake that wound up clinching the election for then-candidate Barack Obama, reports Money & Company, the L.A. Times’ Business blog. Clinton’s remarks came before a meeting of the World Business Forum in New York on Wednesday, and were first reported in The [...]

CompuCredit, an Atlanta subprime lender that specializes in high-rate credit cards, payday loans, auto financing and debt collection, is part of the country’s leading coalition on financial literacy.

The Florida house that former Washington Redskins safety Sean Taylor bought for his family, and where he was shot and killed by an intruder, is headed for foreclosure. And his mother is struggling to hold on to her own home as well, The Washington Post reports.
When Taylor died without a will on Nov. 27, 2007, [...]

This shouldn’t go by unnoticed: The former head of Enron’s failed Internet division was just sentenced to 16 months in prison, The Washington Post reports. Joseph Hirko, the former broadband unit CEO also agreed to pay $8.7 million in restitution. Prosecutors contend Hirko falsely promoted Enron’s broadband division to analysts to help pump up the [...]

This should sound familiar: Growing losses on Federal Housing Administration-backed mortgage loans are prompting fears the agency will be next in line for taxpayer help, The Wall Street Journal says.
The Federal Housing Administration, hit by increasing mortgage-related losses, is in danger of seeing its reserves fall below the level demanded by Congress, according to government [...]

For many people, one of the confounding things about the financial crisis has been trying to grasp exactly what happened on Wall Street — and how things could have gotten so out of hand. The financial press, in many ways, hasn’t been of much help here, throwing around terms like C.D.O.s and credit default swaps [...]

With disgraced Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff safely behind bars to serve his 150- year prison sentence, the business of figuring out how he pulled off one of the greatest financial swindles of all time is in full swing. The Washington Post looks at three new books out on Madoff, none of which seem to offer [...]