Alastair Darling’s one-off bonus windfall tax seems theoretically sound, to me. People can quibble with the floor above which the tax is applicable but the principle is sound. Emanuel Derman wrote about it a while ago. I had blogged it here. He reckoned that since bankers were bailed out by taxpayers, he felt that it [...]
‘Economist’ (Oct. 22, 2009 issue) ends a piece on American banks with this pithy observation on the state of the health of the American banking system:
Right now America’s banking system resembles a pyramid. At the top, two or three firms are doing well. But beneath them are a handful of giant conglomerates that are struggling [...]
Via BaselineScenario, I landed on this article by Joe Nocera. It needs no explanation. It lambasts the American Bankers’ Association for lobbying against the Consumer Protection Bill that has been watered down by Mr. Barney Frank already. It is self-explanatory. I do not want to spoil your fun by citing selectively. Read the whole stuff, [...]
Check out Simon Johnson’s questions to the New York Fed.
George Washington’s guest post at Naked Capitalism says that the failure to break up banks now is due to the same logic that prevailed in the 1980s: that the banks are insolvent.
Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism reviews the remarks of Joseph Ackermann of Deutsche Bank on [...]
Wr iting in New York Times, Joe Nocera concludes his piece as follows:
Late this week, I asked the Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, what he thought the banks owed the country. In responding, he made a point that often gets lost in all the anger. We did get something in return for all that bailout money, [...]
Thanks to Barry Ritholtz (author of ‘Bailout Nation’), I came across this article in Wall Street Journal on the intense lobbying efforts that banks had undertaken on the suspension of mark-to-market accounting on the asset side of their balance-sheets.
I do remember (I thought I had posted a comment on this but it appears that I [...]
From the New York Times
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation indefinitely postponed a central element of the Obama administration’s bank rescue plan on Wednesday, acknowledging that it could not persuade enough banks to sell off their bad assets. [More here]
I had earlier posted a comment on a piece by Gilian Tett that said that the entire PPIP [...]
… www.baselinescenario.com. I do not have to write any foreword for these two links – one on ‘Banks tunnelling and the risk of inflation’ and the other on banks buying toxic assets from each other.
In fact, Simon Johnson does a very good job of showing why banks’ behaviour risks provoking inflation in the US.
Of course, [...]
Over the weekend, Dr. Reddy had given a comprehensive interview to MINT. As my friend Nitin observed, it must be the most understated launch of a book by a central banker, who was arguably the best in the last half decade if not longer. His book is India and the Global Financial Crisis: Managing Money and [...]
When it comes to news-stories, WSJ does some pretty good work. For example, their piece on the New York Fed chairman and his purchase of Goldman Sachs shares, etc. was very detailed and meticulous. It must have contributed to his eventual resignation.
Now, this one on the negotiations on the Stress test Results
Citigroup’s capital shortfall was [...]
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