Posts Tagged ‘Wall Street’
Place Your Bets
Thursday, November 12th, 2009One Year Later
Thursday, November 5th, 2009
What a difference a year makes, especially when the economy is bad. The independents, who went so heavily for Obama in 2008, swung back the other way in New Jersey and Virginia. The experts are mixed on whether this is an early sign of weakness for the Democrats or whether it’s the usual dissatisfaction with the party in power during an economic slowdown, compounded by weak candidates in both races. I think it’s a little of both. We are an impatient people, used to instant gratification. Obama, in office for ten months, has clearly not had time to undo all of the damage of the last eight years, but I say it’s time to move on and hold him responsible for the state of the economy. While we’re at it, I have some other things to blame him for.
Matador
Friday, October 30th, 2009
The closer we get to economic recovery, the more difficult it’s going to be to reform Wall Street. Congress has already dithered for almost a year, and still no substantial reforms of the practices that led to the economic meltdown have emerged. For all Obama’s lecturing of the miscreants, he’s done little to force them to change their ways. The few banks that are now showing a profit are doing so largely because they’re trading in the same kinds of risky securities that led us to this mess in the first place. Worse, they’ve learned the wrong lesson: if they screw up again, we’ll bail them out rather than risk the destruction of the economy, and they’ll be rewarded yet again with huge bonuses paid for by the taxpayers, assuming we have anything left by then.
Guilt Money
Tuesday, October 20th, 2009
I tried to imagine how it must feel to be one of those Wall Street bankers who stand to make tens of millions in bonuses from bailout money after nearly bringing the world’s economy to its knees. I know I’d feel too guilty to take the money, so I could only speculate that these guys must have an honorable reason for not refusing their ill-gotten windfalls. I came up with this.
Back in Business
Tuesday, September 15th, 2009
A year later, and the folks who gave us the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression are back at it. You’d think that the debacle would have given them at least a small does of humility, but no. Having been bailed out with hundreds of billion of the public’s money, they’re rewarding themselves for their financial brilliance with huge salaries and bonuses,and are already busy creating the next generation of bogus investments. Nothing like the next stock market bubble to raise the spirits. Meanwhile, Washington is still dithering over reform, with nothing of real consequence expected anytime soon.
Good News
Monday, August 24th, 2009
I find it amusing that every bit of good news about the economy seems to be that it’s bad, but just not as bad as it was before, or less bad than expected. If economists and newscasters were truly telling it like it is, it would sound like this. Oddly, even though every kid over six uses language like this, along with the kids on the Disney channel and every animated cartoon, most newspaper editors would have trouble with it. I’m not kidding. And we wonder why newspapers are dying. We’ll see how many dare to run such a racy caption.
What Recession?
Saturday, July 18th, 2009
Goldman Sachs has recovered quite nicely from the recession they helped create. They’ve paid back the bailout money already, and freed from the strings that came with it, they’re rewarding themselves for their business prowess with executive compensation above pre-crash levels. How did they do it? By being smarter than the other banks. Oh, it’s not that they didn’t play the same risky game with mortgage-backed securities and derivatives; they just saw the disaster coming before everyone else did and passed off their toxic assets to less prescient investors. To the victor the spoils. What’s especially troubling about all this is that neither they nor the government seems to have learned anything. So far the Wall Streeters in the Obama administration have shown little interest in actually fixing the system. The heart of the problem is precisely the executive compensation Sachs is lavishing upon itself. Without strict limits on how much these robber barons can help themselves to, the temptation to rig the game once more will be too great, and another economic meltdown is inevitable.
Dark Knight
Friday, July 3rd, 2009
The latest revelations about the SEC’s failure to investigate Bernard Madoff’s dealings, despite the red flags raised by a number of people, should not surprise us, given recent and not so recent history. Until recently, Congress was in serious in deregulation mode, and the agency followed the prevailing mood of keeping hands off Wall Street. Let the Masters of the Universe practice their arcane craft without government poking its intrusive nose into the business of making money. We were all getting rich, weren’t we? Sure, there were times when the bubbles would burst, but the market always seemed to recover and zoom to new heights.
Until now. oops.
What worries me is that the failures of the regulators seem to have less to do with their failures than with the willingness of Congress to let Wall Street make its own rules. Even now, the administration is shying away from tightening the rules on the banks, preferring instead to attempt to strengthen the hand of the regulators. This is, I believe, a prescription for future disasters. We’re already seeing executive compensation creeping back up to pre-crash levels. The willingness of bankers to take inordinate risks in order to cash in their mega-millions was at the heart of the economic debacle we’ve just experienced. I can’t help but think that we’re setting the stage for another one.
Captain Overboard
Thursday, June 11th, 2009
So now the banks that took the bailout money want to give it back as fast as they can. Why? Surely not because they’re suddenly solvent. No, not exactly. The big boys are chafing at the rules that come attached to the money–more transparency in how they do their business, and limits on the bonuses the execs can take. How dare the government that’s saving them from their own greed and mismanagement tell them how to run their businesses!
Testing, Testing
Tuesday, May 5th, 2009
The results of the administration’s bank stress tests will be revealed on Thursday. Frankly, I don’t put a lot of faith in the results. Maybe I’m getting too cynical in my old age, but I’m betting that the fix is in, and this is going to be used as a public relations victory for the government’s bailout program. See,things aren’t as bad as we thought. What we’re doing is working! Meanwhile, the rest of us are enduring our daily stress test. I don’t know about you, but I already know the results of mine.
