Spotted this just after today’s Ireland post. I reckon NC’s UK and US readers and others will have got the idea of ‘extend and pretend’ , aka ‘forbearance’ already; always good to see it getting called out again though.
Read more...No formal announcement yet, but some presumably well-sourced rumours about the size of the Irish bailout (EUR 85Bn), and the rate (7%, via the redoubtable Twitterer on all matters Irish @LorcanRK). While we await the budget statement, there are reasons to suspect, or hope, that the bailout, like Godot, will never come, because it’s failing […]
Read more...First, let’s have a quick trip down memory lane. The financial crisis got going properly in the UK in August 2007, with the ABCP seize-up leading to the run on Northern Rock in September. Congdon illustrates how dependent banks had become on wholesale funding: At June 2007 UK banks’ cash deposits at the Bank of […]
Read more...Hope you enjoy the second part of our discussion on Real News Network. Part 1 is here. More at The Real News
Read more...Back in July, Rebel Economist noted how the Greek bailout actions had compromised the ECB: The first concession made by the ECB was in the collateral requirements for its lending to eurosystem banks. These were set in terms of agency credit ratings, no doubt to distance the ECB from the task of differentiating between the […]
Read more...The domestic politics of Ireland are still on a tightrope. Their coalition government, which had has been studiously ignoring three empty parliamentary seats, has now been told by the Supreme Court to get on with it and hold by-elections for one of them, which has been unoccupied for a scandalous 18 months. The by-election is […]
Read more...By Viral Acharya, Professor of Finance, Stern School of Business, New York University, Thomas F. Cooley Professor of Economics, Stern School of Business and Faculty of Arts and Science, New York University, Matthew Richardson, Professor of Applied Economics, Stern School of Business, New York University, Richard Sylla, Professor of Economics, Stern School of Business, New […]
Read more...It keeps getting better. From Bloomberg, we have this tired-looking plaint What were banking regulators doing while some of the biggest U.S. lenders routinely filed false foreclosure documents in local courthouses around the country? …but, since that is Jonathan Weil speaking, there’s a twist: In the case of IndyMac Federal Bank, it turns out the […]
Read more...Barack Obama is purported to have studied the Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Reagan presidencies in depth before he took office, yet he appears to have ignored one of Lincoln’s best known sayings: “You may fool all the people some of the time, you can even fool some of the people all of the time, but you […]
Read more...Today, quite a few commentators fell in with the take of the writeup by Real Time Economics on a speech by Paul Volcker given a conference on macroprudential regulation hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. Its lead-in: Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker scrapped a prepared speech he had planned to deliver at […]
Read more...The normally sound Gillian Tett of the Financial Times endorses an idea that is both dangerous and unnecessary, namely, government backstopping of the system of short-term collateralized lending called repo, for “sale with agreement to repurchase.” The problem with her analysis is that her proposal treats symptoms rather than the underlying ailment. It would amount […]
Read more...Tom Adams and I saw an advance screening of the Charles Ferguson film Inside Job, a documentary on the financial crisis, due for theatrical release in New York on October 8. Given how well each of us knows the subject matter, we’re not easily swayed, but I can speak for both of us in giving […]
Read more...Various updates on the possible drivers of the GMAC announcement suspending its foreclosures in 23 states. Max Gardner, a North Carolina bankruptcy attorney who is held in high esteem and is playing a leading role in legal efforts against foreclosure fraud, provided this comment on our earlier post on the GMAC bombshell: I believe this […]
Read more...In case you lost track of this sorry affair, AIG, the biggest ward of the state in human history, continues to get the kid glove treatment. The IMF, doing the dirty work of the Washington Consensus, has repeatedly imposed far more pain on over-indebted countries than US government on the failed insurer. AIG originally agreed […]
Read more...By William K. Black, Associate Professor of Economics and Law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One One of the great advantages of blogs is spurring informative debate. The debates also tend to morph as commentators develop their arguments. I want to […]
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