The Foundry

Posts Tagged ‘bankruptcy’

• TARP Inspector General: Same Road, Faster Car

  Posted February 1st, 2010 at 3:40pm in Enterprise and Free Markets, Ongoing Priorities with 3 comments

  In an unusually harsh report released yesterday, the government’s Special Inspector General for TARP blasted the bailout program, charging that it has not only failed to meet its goals, but that — absent change — it may have made things worse. Among other things, Inspector General Neil Barofsky concluded that because of the bailouts, the market [...] More

• Bankruptcy: A Better Answer to “Too Big to Fail”

  Posted December 10th, 2009 at 5:21pm in Enterprise and Free Markets with 2 comments

  The financial reform bill that is currently before the House would give regulators virtually unlimited power over “too big to fail” financial institutions. Those are large, complex and usually international entities whose failure could cause such a shock to the interconnected financial system that others would be endangered. Under the House bill, if one of [...] More

• AIG: Did Geithner Give Away the Farm?

  Posted November 17th, 2009 at 4:20pm in Enterprise and Free Markets with 1 comments

  It’s official: U.S. taxpayers did not get a good deal when they bailed out AIG last year. That was the conclusion of a report released yesterday by Neil Barofsky, the federal government’s special inspector general for TARP. The conclusion is no surprise: no one holds up the $170 billion [...] More

• CIT Bankruptcy Shows that It is Time to End TARP

  Posted November 3rd, 2009 at 8:30am in Enterprise and Free Markets with 2 comments

  Sunday, CIT Group, with $71 billion in assets one of the largest small business lenders in the country and the recipient last December of $2.3 billion in taxpayer money filed for bankruptcy. It was the fifth largest bankruptcy in US history. Monday, nothing much happened. Stocks didn’t collapse. There was no panic. In fact, all of [...] More

• Medical Bankruptcies Are Falling

  Posted July 24th, 2009 at 10:59am in Health Care with 3 comments

  Recent media reports tout a forthcoming study in the American Journal of Medicine claiming that medical bills are responsible for 60% of U.S. personal bankruptcies. Putting aside the overly-generous criteria for counting a bankruptcy as “medical,” the figures reported in the study actually show that even by their criteria, medical bankruptcy is actually dropping. As [...] More

• Obama Financial Regulation Plan: Empowering Regulators, Not Consumers

  Posted June 17th, 2009 at 4:49pm in Enterprise and Free Markets with 2 comments

  After months of internal debate, President Obama today released his much-anticipated plan for reforming the nation’s financial regulatory system. The 85-page document is nothing if not comprehensive, containing a grab bag of changes covering almost every aspect of the troubled financial industry. Taken as a whole, the changes would trigger the largest increase in government [...] More

• The Government and GM: How Reluctant a Shareholder?

  Posted June 1st, 2009 at 2:11pm in Enterprise and Free Markets with 18 comments

  Will the new majority owner of General Motors — the United States Government — take an active role in managing the firm as it struggles for viability? In a statement earlier today, President Obama insisted that the government wouldn’t impose it’s own political agenda on GM. “What we are not doing, what I have no interest [...] More

• Meet GM’s Bondholders: Jim Graves

  Posted May 20th, 2009 at 5:46pm in Enterprise and Free Markets, Ongoing Priorities with 23 comments

  As the State of Indiana announces it will no longer invest in bonds issued by banks and automakers who receive federal bailout money, and waits for a court ruling on whether the the U.S. government acted legally in the Chrysler bankruptcy, we thought we would bring you another installment of Meet GM’s Bondholders. Today: Jim [...] More

• Meet GM’s Bondholders: Chris Crowe

  Posted May 18th, 2009 at 6:21pm in Enterprise and Free Markets with 27 comments

  Throughout the next two weeks, the Foundry will be highlighting some testimonials of General Motors bondholders. When President Obama describes bondholders, you get the distinct impression of pinstripe-suit-wearing bankers with scotch in one hand and cigars in the other. However, that is far from the case. In fact, GM bondholders are retirees, parents, civic organizations, [...] More

• More on Chrysler and Offers You Can’t Refuse

  Posted May 4th, 2009 at 11:01am in Enterprise and Free Markets with 1 comments

  Did the White House threaten a Chrysler creditor who refused to sign on to the rescue plan brokered by the government? That’s the charge levelled on Friday by a lawyer for the holdout creditors. In an interview with a Detroit radio station, attorney Thomas Lauria said that the investment firm Perella Weinberg Partners [...] More