By Max Bruche. Assistant Professor of Economics, CEMFI and Gerard Llobet i Codina, Associate Professor of Economics, CEMFI. Originally posted at VoxEU Bank bailouts have been controversial from the outset, with some commentators saying that they reward banks for making risky loans. This column investigates the idea of an asset buyback in which a special […]
Read more...There are a lot of bad things you can say about Fannie and Freddie: that they were part of the oversubsidization of housing in America, that they’ve had an overlarge side business of funneling cash to friendly politicians, that some of their “innovative” practices, like requiring the use of the electronic mortgage registration system, MERS, […]
Read more...GM, with $75 bn in cash in reserves, bought AmeriCredit, a small subprime lender, in an all cash deal for $3.5 bn. GM is also currently in bankruptcy. AmeriCredit, which is rated BB by Fitch, was put on watch by Fitch, after the deal announcement. Fitch is unsure whether the deal will help or hurt […]
Read more...Even if the rating agencies have retired hurt, it does seem that there is one organization still prepared to issue guarantees on, say, Option-ARM backed structured finance. Step forward, the collective of good old American taxpayers! One of my friendly emailers had a complete conniption about an FDIC program, during the week, and I never […]
Read more...Just a reminder of one little corner of the toxic debt fiasco that has plenty of bite still left in it. The Irish banks got in a big mess with duff RE loans. The government swapped discounted bad loans for government-issued bonds. A new agency, NAMA, monitors the duff loan portfolio. There are half a […]
Read more...By Wallace C. Turbeville, the former CEO of VMAC LLC and a former Vice President of Goldman, Sachs & Co. who writes at New Deal 2.0 William D. Cohan’s op-ed piece in the July 7th New York Times had the same title as this article, but for the word “Don’t.” At first glance, I thought […]
Read more...In an interesting bit of reporting disparity, news of planned EU legislation on bank pay is a top story on the front page of the Financial Times, yet is buried in the Wall Street Journal and didn’t make the cut at the New York Times. Admittedly, that is no doubt in part due to that […]
Read more...A reader with considerable experience in real estate who has asked to remain anonymous pointed to an article in Housing Wire describing some possible unintended consequences of the Administration’s push for more short sales: This past week, I received an email from one of my dearest friends that has really stuck with me. It illuminates […]
Read more...This blog warned a few weeks ago of a coming campaign by the officialdom against so-called “strategic defaulters”. It has arrived even sooner than we expected. We warned that this development was the inevitable result of financial firms, taking an increasingly predatory posture toward their customers. Borrowers are responding in kind, by taking a cold-blooded […]
Read more...By Tom Adams, an attorney and former monoline executive When the financial crisis hit, I was in the direct line of fire. My company blew up very early in the crisis, giving me the dubious opportunity to see how bad things were going to get long before most of the rest of the world, including […]
Read more...In a weak nod to “too big to fail” concerns, House Financial Services Committee chairman Barney Frank announced that larger banks and hedge funds would pay a fee as a way of pre-funding resolution costs. From the Financial Times: The proposed levy emerged as an unwelcome surprise for the industry deep into a late-evening congressional […]
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Read more...Well, the BP disaster, in particular the intense press coverage of this week, appears to have provided the Administration with some very useful air cover, by diverting public attention from the final rounds in the battle to reform Wall Street. One of the common arguments against the need to create mechanisms to moderate corporate and […]
Read more...By Gonzalo Lira, a novelist and filmmaker (and economist) currently living in Chile and writing at Gonzalo Lira On the occasion of the BP oil spill disaster, President Obama’s delivered an Oval Office speech last night—a masterpiece of milquetoast faux-outrage. The speech was all about “clean energy” and “ending our dependence on fossil fuels”. Faced […]
Read more...I’m not quite certain how to calibrate journalism American Banker style, but I found this article, “Challenges to Foreclosure Docs Reach a Fever Pitch,” (sadly, subscription only, e-mailed by Chris Whalen), to be both interesting and more than a tad disingenuous. The spin starts with the headline, it’s a doozy. The “challenge to foreclosure documents” […]
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