Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke has delivered yet another ominous prediction about Dodd–Frank fallout, telling the Senate Banking Committee last week that government dictates on debit card fees “could result in some smaller banks being less profitable or even failing.” Although not the first to recognize the problem, the Fed …
A whopping 62 percent of Americans now say the United States is on the wrong track, yet President Barack Obama and liberals in Congress continue to steer the country in the same downhill direction toward bigger government. That runaway train picked up more speed this morning, as a House-Senate conference …
According to a Reuters report, French economy minister Christine Lagarde today applauded President Obama’s call for more regulation of the U.S. financial sector. “I am delighted that [the] president of the United States is following our lead,” she added. In a possibly related story, the Dow Jones yesterday dropped by …
It is fun and politically profitable to attack banks and bankers, especially in the wake of a bailout program estimated to have cost American taxpayers some $150 billion. Given this, the plan floated yesterday by the Obama Administration to charge a “fee” (read tax) on financial institutions to cover losses …
A top story in the Washington Post last Saturday concerned Chinese banks. It was badly misleading, to the point of almost seeming intentional. The article leads with the claim that “new lending by Chinese banks has injected $1.3 trillion into the world economy.” That is the figure injected into the …
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 …
Yesterday, the Treasury Department announced that 10 financial institutions had been cleared to return their TARP bailout money — totalling some $68 billion to the government. This is good news — taxpayers are finally getting some of their money back, and banks look to regain their independence, putting the threat …
The Obama Administration tried to portray the plan as no big deal, akin to simply filling in a loophole. The idea was to provide the FDIC with authority to seize failing “non–banK” financial institutions such as holding companies, insurance firms and hedge funds, similar to the powers they already have …
Is it any coincidence that on the same day that the Obama Administration announces restrictions on executive pay for companies taking government bailout money, Goldman Sachs announced that it is pulling out of the government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program? The investment bank, says CFO David Viniar, is chafing under the …
