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 …
Interpreting statements of Federal Reserve Chairmen has long been considered a high art form. During Alan Greenspan’s time, journalists and financial analysts made huge efforts to understand his cryptic comments on the economy, with the result that a few sentences could spawn literally pages of analysis designed to “explain” the …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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. …
