Blog Archive » Why Meredith Whitney thinks a “bad bank” is a bad idea. HEARD ON THE STREET: The Debt Domino Risk for Europe's Insurers. The Crisis of Credit Visualized. Nationalization? Never! Wally Pfister is nervous—and with good reason. In a few hours, Pfister, 52, will slip into his best suit and head from his house in the Hollywood Hills to Westwood’s Regency Village Theater for the red-carpet premiere of his new movie, Transcendence. For most filmmakers Pfister’s age, this would be a moment to bask in. A luxurious $100 million budget. A sterling cast led by Johnny Depp, Morgan Freeman, Rebecca Hall, Kate Mara, and Paul Bettany.
And a thought-provoking story about a brilliant scientist named Will Caster (Depp) whose heartbroken wife Evelyn (Hall) uploads his brain into a supercomputer after he dies—transforming him into a kind of omnipresent, omnipotent, and possibly malevolent digital god. But Pfister isn’t most filmmakers his age. “This is a very difficult period right now—being in limbo,” he admits. But Pfister was getting antsy, as usual. We’re sitting in Pfister’s rec room—his man cave, of sorts. Pfister looks exhausted too. Pfister offers me a glass of water. Why? Twenty-five people at the heart of the meltdown ... | Business. Alan Greenspan, chairman of US Federal Reserve 1987- 2006Only a couple of years ago the long-serving chairman of the Fed, a committed free marketeer who had steered the US economy through crises ranging from the 1987 stockmarket collapse through to the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, was lauded with star status, named the "oracle" and "the maestro".
Now he is viewed as one of those most culpable for the crisis. He is blamed for allowing the housing bubble to develop as a result of his low interest rates and lack of regulation in mortgage lending. He backed sub-prime lending and urged homebuyers to swap fixed-rate mortgages for variable rate deals, which left borrowers unable to pay when interest rates rose. For many years, Greenspan also defended the booming derivatives business, which barely existed when he took over the Fed, but which mushroomed from $100tn in 2002 to more than $500tn five years later. Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England Politicians Gordon Brown, prime minister.