The Foundry

Posts Tagged ‘financial markets’

• Fannie and Freddie: The Sky’s the Limit

  Posted December 29th, 2009 at 1:50pm in Enterprise and Free Markets with 1 comments

  While most of us were at home waiting for Santa and his reindeer to arrive, a gift arrived for mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as the Obama Administration lifted caps on how much bailout money they can receive from the U.S. Treasury. The old limits for the firms, both of which [...] More

• Calling Claude Raines: Study Finds Politics in TARP Bailout

  Posted December 26th, 2009 at 12:33pm in Enterprise and Free Markets with 12 comments

  A late end-of-year entry for the 2009 Claude Raines Award goes to a study just released by two economists at the University of Michigan finding that banks with political connections were more likely to get TARP funds than those without them. “Our results show that political connections play an important role in a firm’s access to [...] More

• Video: Barney Frank’s Permanent TARP

  Posted December 11th, 2009 at 12:54pm in Enterprise and Free Markets with 11 comments

  As early as today, the House is set to approve Rep. Barney Frank’s (D-MA) financial regulation bill intended to prevent future Wall Street bailouts by granting regulators sweeping new powers to control firms deemed “too big to fail.” But as Heritage Senior Research Fellow David John explains below, the Frank bill actually encourages future bailouts [...] 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

• Consumer Financial Protection: An Alternative

  Posted December 10th, 2009 at 5:04pm in Enterprise and Free Markets with 1 comments

  Creating a new “Consumer Financial Protection Agency” (CFPA), as proposed in the financial regulation bill now before the House, would raise costs for consumers, reduce the number and type of products available to them, increase the micro-management of financial services firms, and greatly increase the confusion caused by differing and conflicting consumer laws in the [...] More

• Mortgage Cramdowns Will Hurt Consumers

  Posted December 10th, 2009 at 4:29pm in Enterprise and Free Markets with 9 comments

  Just as the housing market is showing definite signs that it is stabilizing after a lengthy drop in housing prices, the House of Representatives is about to vote on proposal that would destabilize it once again while also raising the cost of mortgages for future home buyers. The proposal – to be offered by [...] More

• TARP: Will This Crony Capitalist Slush Fund Ever Die?

  Posted December 4th, 2009 at 11:54am in Enterprise and Free Markets with 11 comments

  It’s been used to buy one car company, give another to union allies, punish non-union workers, undermine the bankruptcy code, enrich Wall Street at the expense of Main Street, keep unionized Zombie firms from dying, and generally terrorize the world economy. Now the left in Congress wants to use it again, this time as a [...] More

• Barney Frank’s Plan: A Permanent TARP?

  Posted December 3rd, 2009 at 1:53pm in Enterprise and Free Markets with 5 comments

  The House Financial Services Committee yesterday OK’d a key part of Barney Frank’s agenda for reform of the financial industry yesterday, voting to 31-27 to adopt his plan for so-called “too-big-to-fail” banks. The measure has been widely touted as providing a way to avoid future budget-busting bailouts of the industry. That would be welcome. After a [...] More

• TARP: It Couldn’t End Thune Enough

  Posted November 18th, 2009 at 2:33pm in Enterprise and Free Markets with 23 comments

  In an era when legislation routinely exceeds 1,000 pages, the bill introduced by Sen. John Thune yesterday — at seven lines — doesn’t look like much. But looks can be deceptive. If adopted, those seven lines would guarantee the end of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), a critical first step toward putting federal finances, [...] More

• Lock In The Deficit Savings: End TARP Entirely

  Posted November 12th, 2009 at 11:26am in Enterprise and Free Markets with 0 comments

  The Wall Street Journal reports: The Obama administration, under pressure to show it is serious about tackling the budget deficit, is seizing on an unusual target to showcase fiscal responsibility: the $700 billion financial rescue. The administration wants to keep some of the unspent funds available for emergencies, but is considering setting aside a chunk for debt [...] More