In April, the multibillion-dollar hedge fund Paulson & Co. was cited in a blockbuster Securities and Exchange Commission civil fraud suit against Wall Street investment bank Goldman Sachs. The SEC complaint alleged that Paulson helped build investment vehicles predicated on rising real-estate prices — and then bet against them, More…
For the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, it is WaMu week.
Tomorrow, the subcommittee will release more than 500 documents on Washington Mutual, the $300 billion bank that helped fuel the subprime bubble and then collapsed in the biggest bank failure in U.S. history. It will also hold a More…
As a credit squeeze continues, calls to beef up financial literacy among America’s consumers are taking on a new urgency.
In Massachusetts, Democratic Senate candidate Stephen Pagliuca is pushing for a national financial literacy campaign, saying it would help avoid a repeat of the financial system collapse More…
The payday lending industry, stung by losses in states that either refused to authorize their high-rate, short-term loans or moved to limit finance charges, isn’t giving up without a fight.
Payday lenders are out in full force in Wisconsin, where a legislative battle is underway over efforts More…
Journalist and social critic Barbara Ehrenreich takes on the recession’s racial divide, making the point that the hard times are hitting the black community with particular fervor. In a New York Times piece this weekend, Ehrenreich correctly pointed out that even high-income blacks were more likely than More…
Just a year ago, the theory that poor and minority borrowers were to blame for the housing crisis took hold with a vengeance, and so did the belief that the government forced lenders to make subprime mortgages to meet affordable housing goals. The view took on greater More…
One of the many unanswered questions about the current financial crisis is why there haven’t been more criminal investigations into what happened, including the highly suspect actions of the rating agencies, the banks, and mortgage brokers. At Salon, economist Simon Johnson and author and former investment banker More…
Here’s a huge pat on the back and a show of support for Barry Ritholtz, who truly has had it with those who keep clinging to the widely discredited belief that the Community Reinvestment Act caused the housing crisis. Ritholtz writes at The Big Picture that he’s offering a More…
If you ever got picked on as a kid, and handled it by clinging to the belief that life was fair and your nemesis would get a comeuppance, then this is for you:
Fremont General Corp. once one of the nation’s top 10 subprime lenders, has agreed to pay $10 More…
Mortgage Insider tells the sad tale of an 85-year-old widow, living alone with no surviving family members to turn to, who is about to lose her home. Rita Gillam lived in her Orange County, Calif., home for 50 years. It is scheduled for a foreclosure auction sale today.
Gillam,
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