Blowing the Lid Off the Mortgage Industry
From the category archives:
The Guardian is reporting that Goldman Sachs staff can expect the largest bonuses in the firm’s 140 year history as the investment bank has leveraged (pun intended) dwindling competition and the brokering of US debt issuances to massive first quarter profits. The bank, on track for a $2.5+ billion profit will be doling out large chunks [...]
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Nouriel Roubini thinks that the new Obama banking reform plan gets it 75% right. This in a video interview on Yahoo! Finance. His one caveat is that the previous Fed under Greenspan had all the power, but didn’t care about managing risk, they wanted innovation at any cost. That mindset led us to the big [...]
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GOOD Magazine has a great graphic representation of the biggest bankruptices in history. (click link for bigger size) Check out Lehman bro’s $691 billion BK, more than 7 times the size of GM’s recent bankruptcy. (h/t Boing Boing for the image)
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We reported earlier that 19 banks were OK’d by the Treasury to pay back the TARP funds that were injected in to them during the first round of the bailout. According to the naked capitalism here are the banks that passed stress tests and will get to pay their TARP funds back:
The institutions are [...]
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The Treasury announced today that 19 banks have been allowed repay a total of $68 billion in TARP funds. The banks, who remain nameless were granted permission to buy back the warrants that the Treasury holds in each company at “fair market value.” These 19 banks are in addition to 22 smaller institutions [...]
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“We are responding to consumers’ desires to have more refinancing options,” said Freddie Mac Executive Vice President Don Bisenius. “As an added benefit, we are expanding the program and providing greater flexibility in financing closing costs. Freddie Mac is committed to doing everything we can to bring the benefits of the Administration’s Making Home Affordable [...]
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Excellent interview with Michael Lewis who talks about his days at Solomon and how the 1980’s were really the start of this era of greed and malfeasance that led to the economic calamity we’re currently going through. He goes on with the following insight regarding the players in the game that portends future disaster (h/t [...]
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“This is the tale of two companies,” Robert Khuzami, Director of the Security and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) Division of Enforcement explained in a public statement announcing the filing of financial fraud charges against Countrywide Financial CEO Angelo Mozilo and two other former executives. “Countrywide portrayed itself as underwriting mainly prime quality mortgages using high underwriting [...]
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“Commercial Real Estate lending conditions will likely deteriorate further after a sharp drop in the first quarter of 2009, creating both new opportunities and challenges for community banks,” said Chris Nichols, CEO of Banc Investment Group the capital markets group of Pacific Coast Bankers’ Bancshares. “CRE lending conditions were impacted by a perfect storm of [...]
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“Stimulus funds need to be infused into the economy as quickly and efficiently as possible in order to stimulate growth,” said David Williams, leader of Deloitte’s Financial Advisory Services practice. “However, the legislative process as well as the public’s desire for transparency surrounding how stimulus funds are allocated do not bode well for getting stimulus [...]
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