U.S. banking system

Here’s a fun accounting term to remember: accretable yield. That’s the difference between a loan’s value on a bank’s balance sheet and the expected cash flow from the loan. Bloomberg reports:
JPMorgan Chase & Co. stands to reap a $29 billion windfall thanks to an accounting rule that lets the second-biggest U.S. bank transform bad loans [...]

In 1987, Michael M. Thomas, my former colleague at The New York Observer, published “The Ropespinner Conspiracy.”
The title derives from a remark attributed to Lenin, “The capitalists will sell us the rope with which to hang them.” The book is a twisted tale of economic ruin, in which a banker working within the system destroys [...]