GFC Act I - Bank Credit Crisis
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What's Behind the Foreclosure Crisis | The Economic Populist
"MERS acts as nominee in the county land records for the lender and servicer. Any loan registered on the MERS® System is inoculated against future assignments because MERS remains the nominal mortgagee no matter how many times servicing is traded. MERS as original mortgagee (MOM) is approved by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Ginnie Mae, FHA and VA, California and Utah Housing Finance Agencies, as well as all of the major Wall Street rating agencies."Wall Street. Photograph: Justin Lane/EPA Just when you thought the popularity of Wall Street bankers had hit rock bottom, top US financial institutions have caused uproar for allegedly muscling their way to the front of the queue to get hold of scarce swine flu vaccines. Goldman Sachs , Citigroup and Morgan Stanley were among the first employers in New York to receive shipments of the widely sought after H1N1 antidote from public health authorities this week, prompting furious attacks from political critics who claim bankers are getting privileged treatment.
Wall Street bankers at front of queue for scarce swine flu vacci
Youth unemployment in Latvia is already 31pc, and concentrated among ethnic Russians. Premier Valdis Dombrovskis said his chief task is to "preserve social peace". Neil Shearing from Capital Economics said the appetite for austerity has been exhausted. Latvia is "more likely than not" to devalue, toppling pegs in Estonia and Lithuania. "Financial markets elsewhere in the region are likely to be hit by contagion, with Hungary, Romania, and Ukraine most vulnerable." The area is better able to cope with shocks than during the panic this Spring.
Banks brace for Latvia collapse
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The gang of five, and how they nearly ruined us - Viewsflow
But something has flickered in Sheikh Mohammed's smile. The ubiquitous cranes have paused on the skyline, as if stuck in time. There are countless buildings half-finished, seemingly abandoned. In the swankiest new constructions – like the vast Atlantis hotel, a giant pink castle built in 1,000 days for $1.5bn on its own artificial island – where rainwater is leaking from the ceilings and the tiles are falling off the roof.
The dark side of Dubai - Johann Hari, Commentators - The Indepen
A year ago, it was hardly unthinkable that a math wizard like David X. Li might someday earn a Nobel Prize. After all, financial economists—even Wall Street quants—have received the Nobel in economics before, and Li's work on measuring risk has had more impact, more quickly, than previous Nobel Prize-winning contributions to the field. Today, though, as dazed bankers, politicians, regulators, and investors survey the wreckage of the biggest financial meltdown since the Great Depression, Li is probably thankful he still has a job in finance at all. Not that his achievement should be dismissed.
Recipe for Disaster: The Formula That Killed Wall Street
There is a sense that we are now living through just such a time: barely a decade into the new millennium, barely 20 years since the end of the Cold War and barely 30 years since the triumph of neo-liberalism - that particular brand of free-market fundamentalism, extreme capitalism and excessive greed which became the economic orthodoxy of our time. The agent for this change is what we now call the global financial crisis. In the space of just 18 months, this crisis has become one of the greatest assaults on global economic stability to have occurred in three-quarters of a century. As others have written, it "reflects the greatest regulatory failure in modern history".
Rudd Monthly GFC
Wall Street on the Tundra | vanityfair.com
J ust after October 6, 2008, when Iceland effectively went bust, I spoke to a man at the International Monetary Fund who had been flown in to Reykjavík to determine if money might responsibly be lent to such a spectacularly bankrupt nation. He’d never been to Iceland, knew nothing about the place, and said he needed a map to find it. He has spent his life dealing with famously distressed countries, usually in Africa, perpetually in one kind of financial trouble or another. Iceland was entirely new to his experience: a nation of extremely well-to-do (No. 1 in the United Nations’ 2008 Human Development Index), well-educated, historically rational human beings who had organized themselves to commit one of the single greatest acts of madness in financial history. “You have to understand,” he told me, “Iceland is no longer a country.
#GFC snapshots
Well, it looks like many more billions of dollars will be spent to aid the nation's housing market in what is, in large part, an ultimately futile attempt to keep home prices above where the market would like to take them. Freakishly low interest rates and $8,000 or more in tax credits for homebuyers apparently hasn't done the trick, so the White House today is launching a new program to help homeowners who can't afford to stay in their house by lowering payments through government subsidized financing and, in some cases, reducing mortgage balances. I feel that another leg down is inevitable. I also think the government will try to intervene which may keep us in limbo for longer than necessary. The end could come and we could get back to business in a more stable, albeit lower price level, market if the government would just get out of the way.
The Mess That Greenspan Made
Hero with 1000 faces
Westpac Banking Corp, having already announced 560 job cuts in February, is in search of further cost savings, having hired management consultancy McKinsey to help identify $90 million worth of efficiencies, according to a report by The Australian . Management tiers, outsourcing and information technology are thought to be a particular focus for McKinsey in its search for savings, the report said. A Westpac spokesman reportedly declined to comment on McKinsey's role or the cost-savings efforts, but said that the bank has a long-term focus on improved productivity. “We have made significant progress with this,” he said, according to The Australian . “We work with a number of consultants, including McKinsey, on a range of projects.” Westpac is expected to deliver a cash net profit of $3.16 billion, up one per cent on the preceding half, when it unveils its half-year profit on Thursday, The Australian reported.
Westpac searches for $90m more in savings: report
This is a discussion of the Fed's exit strategy announced today by Ben Bernanke. In particular, the video explains why the Fed has decided to increase the amount paid on reserves when it's time to start reversing policy rather than relying upon traditional open market operations to control the federal funds rate. (Warning: Wonkish) Update : Something I forgot to mention on the video is that controlling inflation is another reason for the Fed to increase the rate it pays on reserves as part of its exit strategy. When the rate the Fed pays on bank reserves increases, banks have less incentive to make loans (because the spread between what the bank can earn holding onto reserves and what it can earn loaning them out falls). If less bank loans are made, there won't be as much inflationary pressure.