Economic Glance
More than a year into the gravest financial crisis since the Great Depression, millions of Americans have seen their home values and retirement savings plunge and their jobs evaporate.
What they haven't seen are any Wall Street tycoons forced to swap their multi-million dollar jobs and custom-made suits for dishwashing and prison stripes.
Why haven't any Wall Street tycoons been sent to the slammer?
Judge Rejects Settlement Over Merrill Bonuses
A Federal District judge on Monday overturned a settlement between the Bank of America and the Securities and Exchange Commission over bonuses paid to Merrill Lynch executives just before the bank took over Merrill last year.
The $33 million settlement “does not comport with the most elementary notions of justice and morality,” wrote Jed S. Rakoff, the judge assigned to the case in federal court in Lower Manhattan
Fed Failed to Curb Flawed Bank Lending, Inspector General Says
Federal Reserve examiners failed to rein in practices that led to losses from excessive real estate lending at two banks in California and Florida that later closed, the central bank’s inspector general said.
Riverside Bank of the Gulf Coast in Cape Coral, Florida, “warranted more immediate supervisory attention” by the Atlanta district bank, Fed Inspector General Elizabeth Coleman said in a report to the central bank’s board. In overseeing County Bank in Merced, California, the San Francisco Fed should have taken a “more aggressive supervisory” approach.
Insiders sell like there's no tomorrow
Corporate officers and directors were buying stock when the market hit bottom. What does it say that they're selling now?
The stock market has mounted an historic rally since it hit a low in March. The S&P 500 is up 55%, as U.S. job losses have slowed and credit markets have stabilized.
But against that improving backdrop, one indicator has turned distinctly bearish: Corporate officers and directors have been selling shares at a pace last seen just before the onset of the subprime malaise two years ago.
How The Federal Reserve Bought The Economics Profession
The Federal Reserve, through its extensive network of consultants, visiting scholars, alumni and staff economists, so thoroughly dominates the field of economics that real criticism of the central bank has become a career liability for members of the profession, an investigation by the Huffington Post has found.
A year after financial crisis, the consumer economy is dead
One year after the near collapse of the global financial system, this much is clear: The financial world as we knew it is over, and something new is rising from its ashes. Historians will look to September 2008 as a watershed for the U.S. economy.
TVNL Comment: Keeping consumers in constant debt is the strategy that feeds capitalism as we know it. Don't kid yourself. The cycle will crawl back and debt will rule once again.
DID LEHMAN BROTHERS FALL OR WAS IT PUSHED?
A year after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers on September 15, 2008, questions still swirl around its collapse. Lawrence MacDonald, whose book A Colossal Failure of Common Sense came out in July 2009, maintains that the bank was not in substantially worse shape than other major Wall Street banks. He says Lehman was just “put to sleep. They put the pillow over the face of Lehman Brothers and they put her to sleep.” The question is, why?
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