Posts Tagged ‘banks’
By James Kwak Jon Macey is no friend of regulation. In 1994, he wrote a paper titled “Administrative Agency Obsolescence and Interest Group Formation: A Case Study of the SEC at Sixty” arguing, in no uncertain terms, that the SEC was obsolete: “the market forces and exogenous technological changes catalogued in this Article* have obviated [...]
Good for Deputy Treasury Secretary (and YLS alumnus) Neal Wolin for wading into the American Bankers Association to defend the Consumer Financial Protection Agency. According to FinReg21′s article: Wolin firmly rejected the argument made by American Bankers Association chief executive Ed Yingling in recent congressional testimony that responsibility for consumer protection should not be separated [...]
The Wall Street Journal (via Calculated Risk) reports that a group of large banks has announced that it will not accept IOUs issued by the state of California. The group includes the four horsemen of the financial crisis: Citigroup, Bank of America/Merrill/Countrywide, JPMorgan Chase/Bear Stearns/WaMu, and Wells Fargo/Wachovia. Write your own ironic commentary. By James [...]
For a snapshot of what’s wrong with our banking policy, look at the front page of the business section of today’s New York Times. On the left side: “U.S. in Standoff with Banks over Chrysler.” On the right side: “Banks Show Clout on Legislation to Help Consumers.” On the left side, a consortium of banks [...]
It’s a beautiful day today, and after Goldman and JPMorgan, I don’t feel like diving deep into Citigroup’s earnings release. But judging from the Bloomberg article, it’s a similar story, just not as good. 1. All the good news was in fixed income trading: $4.7 billion in fixed income trading revenues; falling revenues in credit [...]
In early February, James proposed that bankers’ bonuses be paid out in “toxic assets” – after all, the industry was arguing that these would definitely rebound (“it’s just a liquidity problem”) and that their “true” value was substantially above current market value. The idea was well received by our readers but not so much by the [...]
JPMorgan Chase reported its quarterly earnings today. The headline was $2.1 billion in net income, beating analysts’ estimates. Behind the headlines, it was similar to the story that Goldman told earlier this week: a huge jump in fixed-income trading, status quo everywhere else, and continuing writedowns. For example, if you look at the breakdown of [...]
Goldman Sachs released its quarterly earnings yesterday, and the headline was net income of $1.8 billion, doubling analysts’ estimates. I would say this is definitely good news for Goldman; whether it’s good news for the banking sector as a whole is more uncertain. First, as Bruce Wayne, one of our readers, pointed out, the quarter-over-quarter [...]
Simon argued in the Atlantic article, and I argued in “Frog and Toad” and “Big and Small”, that the best way to regulate the financial sector is to limit the size of individual institutions. In the interests of providing a contrasting point of view, I want to point out that Kevin Drum thinks that small [...]
Leaving aside the question of subsidies, which has gotten piles of attention on the Internet, Simon and I are skeptical that the Geithner Plan will achieve its basic objective: getting enough toxic assets off of bank balance sheets to restore the financial system to normal functioning. We discuss this in today’s Los Angeles Times op-ed, [...]
Mark Thoma does a nice job comparing government purchases, public-private partnerships, and nationalization, and gets the concluding paragraph exactly right. It won’t help you through the complexities of whatever Geithner will announce in the morning, but it explains the basic concepts.
If I had infinite time, I would respond to all reader questions and suggestions. Unfortunately, I can’t. But I’m hoping to occasionally post some in-depth responses to some of the tougher questions we get. Chris Uregian, one of our readers, sent us three questions by email. In summary, he thought that we were overlooking some [...]
According to The New York Times and the The Wall Street Journal, the Treasury Department is set to announce its plan for troubled assets early next week. It will include three components. The details aren’t clear since these are anticipatory news stories, but it will be something like this (combining bits of information from the [...]
This is my last post on nationalization for at least a week, and hopefully a lot longer than that. I’m tired of writing about it. But I was listening to Raghuram Rajan on Planet Money, and things became a little more clear to me. Rajan was saying that he had some concerns about nationalization and [...]
Tweets About Us- RT @baselinescene: Cute: http://t.co/rzK8VjXl. But is it fair to call "ignorance" the result of a steady stream of lies amplified by the media? emmett_j@twitter.com (Emmett Johnson)
- RT @baselinescene: Cute: http://t.co/rzK8VjXl. But is it fair to call "ignorance" the result of a steady stream of lies amplified by the media? JoScoMac@twitter.com (Scott McLean)
- RT @baselinescene: Purebred dog shows have always been creepy. This just confirms it: http://t.co/6iu2bwjR. /JK gebersole@twitter.com (Garrett Ebersole)
- RT @baselinescene: Purebred dog shows have always been creepy. This just confirms it: http://t.co/6iu2bwjR. /JK april_harding@twitter.com (April Harding)
- RT @baselinescene: Purebred dog shows have always been creepy. This just confirms it: http://t.co/6iu2bwjR. /JK APogonowski@twitter.com (AP)
- RT @baselinescene: Purebred dog shows have always been creepy. This just confirms it: http://t.co/6iu2bwjR. /JK jamiesw@twitter.com (JamieSW)
- The Bear&Bull Blog Daily is out! http://t.co/mcAbzHbi ▸ Top stories today via @thestalwart @baselinescene bearbull@twitter.com (bearbull)
- RT @TheBrowser: Mean-Spirited, Bad Economics: @baselinescene on unemployment benefits & Republican party plans to cut them http://t.co/GVnNzAUN drooperman@twitter.com (Drew)
- Agree with RT @baselinescene: Felix Salmon mocking Jack Welch's vacuous management lesson for Facebook http://t.co/BBKIGOIl /JK Alheri@twitter.com (Lilly Evans)
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Who Needs Big Banks?
October 12, 2009 in Commentary
Tags: banks, too big to fail
At a panel discussion at the Pew Charitable Trusts (captured for posterity by Planet Money), Alice Rivlin floated the idea of breaking up big banks. Luckily for us, Scott Talbott of the Financial Services Roundtable (a lobbying group for big banks) was there to slap that idea down. Talbott: “We need big companies, and they [...]