Posts Tagged ‘Wall Street’
Monday, July 19th, 2010
Financial reform actually passed. Another victory for Obama, despite the furious objection of the other party and their Wall Street masters. Much too late, of course, and not strong enough, but at least they’re turning the Titanic slowly away from the deregulatory daze that got us into this mess in the first place. That’s little solace to those of us who have watched our investments dwindle. We could use a little old-fashioned irrational exuberance. Where’s the next bubble going to come from if Wall Street is held accountable? I’m going to have to go back to making money the old-fashioned way, by working for it. And I don’t like it one bit. Let’s have one more round of insanely inflated stock prices. This time I’ll get out when I have enough to retire, and I won’t care when the inevitable bust comes. Then you can regulate all you want. Sound like a plan?
Topics: 401(k), banks, cartoon, Congress, economy, financial reform, opinion, stock market, Wall Street | 1 Comment »
Thursday, July 1st, 2010
The one most important thing that almost everyone agreed that financial reform HAD to do was to break up the “too big to fail” banks, so that we taxpayers wouldn’t be forced to bail them out again if Wall Street continued its reckless ways. So, of course, that was the one thing the financial reform bill nearing the vote in Congress fails to do. I keep thinking that the members of Congress cannot possibly care even less about the people they supposedly serve (us, not the banks), but they keep surprising me with how much sway the lobbyists have over them. One would have thought that the current recession, now in its 30th month with no sign of ending, would have emboldened our representatives in Washington sufficiently to actually break with their corporate masters on this one issue, but it wasn’t to be.
Topics: banks, cartoon, Congress, financial reform, opinion, too big to fail, Wall Street | 21 Comments »
Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010
Surprise! It looks as though the lobbyists are going to win again. The long-delayed financial reform bill is finally taking shape, with a vastly weakened Volcker rule, which would have kept banks from investing their own money in risky bets on the market, and would have prohibited them from owning hedge funds and private equity firms. In other words, the only fix that might have a chance at preventing another economic meltdown is being fixed by Wall Street lobbyists and their willing cohorts in Congress.
Topics: banks, cartoon, Congress, financial reform, opinion, Volker Rule, Wall Street | 3 Comments »
Friday, May 7th, 2010
One of the basic sci-fi dystopian plots came true yesterday, as computer -generated trading apparently took control of the stock market and nearly crashed it. More and more trading is done according to complex programs developed for highly sophisticated computers, which can analyze data and make trades faster than we poor, limited humans can. The problem seems to be that the programs, under the kind of market stresses exhibited yesterday, can build a feedback loop that wildly exaggerates market swings.
Hopeless science fiction fan that I am, the whole thing reminded me of HAL, the insane computer in the iconic film, “2001.” Thus, this cartoon.
Topics: computer trading, correction, meltdown, opinion, stock market, Wall Street | 5 Comments »
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.
Topics: baseball, economy, elections, New York, Obama, Wall Street, Yankees | 32 Comments »
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.
Topics: banking, economy, financial reform, Obama, recession, reform, securities, stock market, Wall Street | 1 Comment »
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.
Topics: bailout, bankers, banks, bonuses, economy, recession, Wall Street | 3 Comments »
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.
Topics: bailout, banks, investment banks, recession, stock market, Wall Street | No Comments »
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.
Topics: economy, Great Recession, recession, recovery, stocks, Wall Street | 2 Comments »
