Yearly Archives: 2010

Guest Post: How Effective Would a Payroll Tax Holiday Be In Spurring Employment and Stimulating the Economy?

→ Washington’s Blog

Obama’s tax deal with Republicans extends the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy for another 2 years.

Obama’s plan would also extend aid for the long-term unemployed for another 13 months.

And the payroll tax (which funds Social Security and Medicare) would be lowered by 2 percentage points during 2011 in an effort to help spur hiring.

But will cutting the payroll tax really help to spur hiring?

Lender Processing Services Produced More Bogus Foreclosure Documents Than It ‘Fessed To

Readers may recall that this site broke the story of litigation against Lender Processing Services, the biggest player in foreclosure management on behalf of mortgage servicers. These cases, launched earlier in the fall, accused the company of taking impermissible legal fees. These class action lawsuits were joined by the US bankruptcy trustee for the Northern District of Mississippi, both for herself and on behalf of all US bankruptcy fees, which meant she felt the issues set forth in the case had merit and were serious. In November, an additional class action case was filed against LPS, this time securities litigation, charging the company with making false and misleading statements to investors from July 29, 2009 to October 4, 2010, including “deceptive and improper document execution and preparation related to foreclosure proceedings.”

Subsequently, as our Richard Smith detailed earlier today, Housing Wire’s Paul Jackson attacked critics of LPS, including this blogger, of going off half baked in accusing the company of engaging in document fabrication. A Reuters investigation published today supports the critics’s case, revealing that document creation was far more extensive that the company has suggested.

Guest Post: Does Bernanke Look Like a Man Who is Confident About the State of the Economy and the Prospects for Recovery?

→ Washington’s Blog There is a lot to say about Bernanke’s comments on 60 Minutes today. Bernanke’s statement that unemployment is the biggest impediment to economic recovery is ironic, given that Bernanke’s policies have increased unemployment. See this and this. Harry Blodget notes that Bernanke implied that inequality is destroying America. Tyler Durden hones in […]

Collateral damage – more than Paul Jackson’s reputation at risk

Events during this financial crisis have repeatedly displayed a degree of disrespect for various pundits’ authority; every so often another pulpit is toppled. So spare a thought for the pundits, the most unmourned of crisis casualties. One skips through the roll of slight miscues (“Lehman repo looks solid”, April ’08), shame (“believe Fuld, Lehman bears […]

Links 12/6/10

Australia Floods Damage Crops, Disrupt Coal Output Bloomberg. When I was in Sydney, one week had the most astonishing rain I can recall. It was extremely heavy the entire time, interrupted by 4-5 absolutely torrential downpours per day. I recall it being reported on TV as 230 centimeters for the week, which I must have […]

Marshall Auerback: What Happens if Germany Exits the Euro?

By Marshall Auerback, a portfolio strategist, hedge fund manager, and Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow. Like marriage, membership in the euro zone is supposed to be a lifetime commitment, “for better or for worse”. But as we know, divorces do occur, even if the marriage was entered into with the best of intentions. And the recent […]

Guest Post: All together now? Arguments for a big-bang solution to Eurozone problems

By Daniel Gros, Director of the Centre for European Policy Studies, Brussels. Cross posted from VoxEU. Muddling through isn’t working. This column argues that troubled Eurozone nations should simultaneously open restructuring talks while continuing to service their debts normally. Germany, France, and other core Eurozone nations would have to stand ready to recapitalise the banks […]

Ireland About to Give Another Sop to the Banks, a Bad Assets Fire Sale?

Reader Swedish Lex, who was involved in the famed and generally well regarded Swedish banking industry cleanup of the early 1990s, read an innocuous-sounding Financial Times story the same way I did. Not only are the banks who lent recklessly to Ireland’s overheated property sector being shielded from most of the consequences of their stupidity […]

Catch Us on the Radio Today

We are on Harry Shearer’s Le Show, a full hour interview on the mortgage mess. Harry really did his homework, so I think readers will enjoy the conversation. It’s “live” at 1 PM EST, then runs throughout the day at various times on public radio stations around the country, including 7 PM on WNYC-AM in […]

Links 12/5/10

Down Pompeii? The ruin of Italy’s cultural heritage Independent (hat tip reader May S). Pompeii may not be the best example. Most of the artwork and artifacts have been stripped and are at a museum in Naples. The site is pretty barren and not as interesting as one might hope, although it is instructive to […]

Adam Levitin Shreds American Securitization Forum Defenses

It isn’t clear why the American Securitization Forum decided to walk into a buzzsaw, but the carnage is proving to be an amusing spectacle. For readers who have not followed this wee saga, mortgage securitization abuses are increasingly looking to be a mess of Titanic proportions. The securitization industry created complex and specific procedures for […]

Links 12/4/10

Poorer nations ‘need carbon cuts’ BBC Sold for slaughter: The hundreds of Dartmoor ponies that nobody wants Daily Mail (hat tip reader May S) :-( 2 more rare red foxes confirmed in Sierra Nevada PhysOrg Site Scrapers Find Free Money on the Web Ed Harrison State Dept. warning prospective recruits to steer clear of Wikileaks […]

Barry Eichengreen: Ireland’s rescue package – Disaster for Ireland, bad omen for the Eurozone

By Barry Eichengreen, Professor of Economics and Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley; and formerly Senior Policy Advisor at the International Monetary Fund. Cross posted from VoxEU Irish interest spreads did not fall and contagion continues. Here one of the world’s leading international economists explains why. Short-sighted, wishful thinking by EU and German […]

Will Thousands of Foreclosures Be Voided Because Non-Lawyers Prosecuted Them?

If you thought robo signing was bad, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. The website 4ClosureFraud presents the gory details of a potential major new front in the foreclosure mess. A Pennsylvania foreclosure mill, Goldbeck McCafferty & McKeever, is accused by Patrick Loughren of allowing non-attorneys to file and prosecute foreclosures. A DailyFinance story gives the […]