Category: Market Regulation
The analysis published under this category are as follows.Tuesday, February 08, 2011
The Burying of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Report / Politics / Market Regulation
Andre Damon writes: Late last month, the US Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission issued the first official report on the causes of the 2008 financial meltdown.
The report is devastating. The commission interviewed over 700 witnesses, held 19 days of public hearings, and investigated millions of documents. Based on this research, it gives a fairly accurate picture of the fraud and criminality that led to the greatest financial catastrophe since the Great Depression.
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Friday, December 10, 2010
C-Span Interviews Janet Tavakoli about her presentation to the FHFA / Politics / Market Regulation
Janet Tavakoli describes the government’s role in regulating Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and how that role may change in the face of proposed legislation. Washington, DC
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Wednesday, December 08, 2010
Repairing the Damage of “Fraud as a Business Model” / Politics / Market Regulation
Presentation to the Federal Housing Finance Agency Supervision Summit Washington, D.C.IMF: I’M Fantasizing
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Wednesday, December 01, 2010
How the SEC stamped out Meaningful Financial Reform / Politics / Market Regulation
Shah Gilani writes: Make no mistake: The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act is a slippery political football.
But this early attempt at reform is actually just the kickoff for a political skirmish that will pit legislators, lobbyists and other hired guns against one another on the post-financial-crisis gridiron.
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Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Fixing FUBAR: Next Week in Washington D.C. / Stock-Markets / Market Regulation
Next week, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), the regulator for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, hosts its Supervision Summit. Attendees comprise 300 "stakeholders," whom I'll address the morning of Wednesday, December 8, 2010 with a presentation titled: Repairing the Damage of "Fraud as a Business Model."
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Friday, November 19, 2010
Misplaced Values Distorted Our Financial System / Politics / Market Regulation
Last week, I discussed how modern economists were insufficient in modeling real world financial decision-making.
My son, a junior at Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, recalls our evening time spent working with his “math folder” when he was a young child, no more than three.
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Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Why Wall Street Bonuses Will Cost Us All in the Long Run / Stock-Markets / Market Regulation
Martin Hutchinson writes: Wall Street firms may not be reaping the record-breaking revenues of 2004-2007, but they're paying themselves the lofty bonuses of that lavish era - and they're doing it at our expense and with the government's blessing.
Wall Street's pay packages, including bonuses, are set to total 4% more in 2010 than in the already record year of 2009, The Wall Street Journal recently reported.
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Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Swiss Finish Sets New Standard for Global Bank Regulation / Politics / Market Regulation
INCIDENT: The traditional Swiss finishing school taught young women etiquette and social graces, but international bank regulators are talking about something much tougher when they refer to a "Swiss finish" for global banks.
Just how tough became clear last week, 4 October, when a Swiss commission proposed that its two giant banks, UBS and Credit Suisse, be subjected to capital requirements of up to 19%, nearly three times as tough as the 7% capital-to-assets ratio recently suggested by the Basel Banking Committee as a minimum global standard.
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Friday, October 08, 2010
SEC Failure to Regulate Mortgage Backed Securities Resulted in Ponzi Scheme Fraud / Politics / Market Regulation
The problems associated with a clogged foreclosure system continue to mount. Foreclosures in 23 states have been halted by major banks after allegations surfaced of various illegal practices.
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Sunday, September 19, 2010
Elizabeth Warren In Office But Not In Power, Bankster's Cheer Tepid Financial Reforms / Politics / Market Regulation
Hooray, Elizabeth Warren is to become a Special Assistant to President Obama in charge of setting up the Consumer Protection Bureau that she conceived. Alas, it is not to be the independent agency she wanted but a bureau within the Federal Reserve Bank, a branch of government that is really run by big banks which and did virtually nothing to protect consumers when they needed help the most.
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Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Banks Catch a Break with Long Timeline for Implementing Basel III Regulations / Companies / Market Regulation
Kerri Shannon writes: Global regulators on Sunday agreed on new banking capital requirements - known as Basel III - that were much less severe than expected, boosting global financial stocks as investors were optimistic about banks' ability to comply.
The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision agreed on new rules that will more than triple capital requirements to give banks a bigger cushion against losses. Banks will have to raise the amount of common equity they hold to 7% of assets, up from 2%.
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Monday, July 26, 2010
U.S. Financial Reform Bill is 2300 Pages of Gobbledygook / Politics / Market Regulation
Worrying that their friends on Wall Street are liable to blow themselves up any day with complex financial products and strategies, Congress has passed and Obama has signed 2,300-plus pages of financial reform that provides "an architecture reflective of the 21st century in which we live, but also one that would rebuild that trust and confidence," claims Senator Christopher Dodd who was the lead sausage grinder on the senate version of the bill.
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Friday, July 23, 2010
Rating Agencies Hold SEC Hostage / Politics / Market Regulation
Less than 24-hours after President Obama signed the historic Wall Street Reform bill into law the SEC suspended the rule that makes the rating agencies more accountable for their ratings. According to the Wall Street Journal, as recently as June 30 the rating agencies thought that the provision for increased accountability had been omitted. They were wrong:
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Friday, July 23, 2010
Signing Financial Reform Is Signing Up For A New Struggle To Make It Real / Politics / Market Regulation
With eleven pens for souvenirs, President Obama signed the financial reform bill in a rare celebratory moment. Significantly, the ceremony did not take place in the Oval Office but up the block at the Ronald Reagan building perhaps to signal recalcitrant Republicans that this is a cause they should sign on to.
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Thursday, July 22, 2010
Dean Baker: Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform Was Doomed From the Start / Politics / Market Regulation
I thought this interview with Dean Baker was interesting. I obviously do not agree with everything that he says, especially regarding the deficits and the attitude of the markets towards them. The US markets are far removed from being efficient mechanisms of capital allocation these days, and as such are unreliable indicators of just about everything except the latest trading fads and speculative excess.
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Monday, July 19, 2010
Is the War on Wall Street Over? / Politics / Market Regulation
An unusual word crept into the lexicon of the New York Times op-ed page, the arbiter of approved thought in the age of economic collapse. The new conservative columnist Ross Douthat dusted off a key phrase associated with Marxism, “class war.”
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Wednesday, July 14, 2010
James K. Galbraith Says The Financial System Must Be Reformed / Politics / Market Regulation
Although I differ considerably from Mr. Galbraith's conclusion that government must take on a larger role financing the reconstruction through the active allocation of capital, I cannot fault his call for a serious reform of the financial system as the sine qua non for a sustainable recovery. Why substitute one version of financial engineering by corrupt politicians for another?
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Wednesday, July 14, 2010
U.S. Senate Financial Reform Too Little, Too Late To Prevent System Crash Again? / Politics / Market Regulation
Is Anyone Really Capable Of Fixing Our Many Deeper Crises?
Progress is, as we have seen, “stalled” in Haiti six months after an earthquake that struck with the impact of a nuclear bomb. A country, we are told, that is trapped in its past actually may exemplify a more frightening future---a world whose institutions, agencies, governments and corporations are sinking in a swamp of their own making, unable and perhaps unwilling to repair catastrophic crises that are morphing into each other.
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Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Chris Whalen Calls for Reforms, But Gives Crony Capitalism and the Neo-Liberals a Rewrite / Politics / Market Regulation
I enjoy Chris Whalen of the Institutional Risk Analyst. His outlook and perspective are generally well-informed and well to the point, fresh and practical.
In his most recent essay titled Building a New American Political Economy, excerpted below, he spends quite a few words in taking Paul Krugman and the stimulus crowd to task, or more accurately, out to the woodshed for what we used to call a 'proper thrashing.'
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Economic Austerity or Stimulus Without Significant Reform Is Madness / Economics / Market Regulation
The economy will not 'cure itself' through benign neglect and liquidationism, because it did not get this way by itself. It did not suffer an accident, or an act of God. This is an unfortunate application of the principle of human healing after an injury to the economy.
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