The trial of two former Bear Stearns hedge fund managers went to a jury on Monday, the first high-profile Wall Street executives criminally charged with fraud over subprime mortgage-backed securities that fueled the market meltdown.
A top U.S. bank regulator said Thursday a government mechanism to dismantle troubled giant financial companies should be pre-funded, a departure from the administration's draft legislation on the subject.
Wednesday, 28 Oct 2009 | Posted By:
Steve Liesman | Source: CNBC.com
The proposed financial reform bill would amend the Federal Reserve Act to take away the central bank’s independent ability to bailout a specific company.
Congress and the Obama administration are about to take up how to deal with institutions that are so big that the government has no choice but to rescue them when they get in trouble, reports the New York Times.
Wednesday, 21 Oct 2009 | Source: The New York Times
Listen to a top economist in the Obama administration describe Paul A. Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chairman who endorsed Mr. Obama early in his election campaign and who stood by his side during the financial crisis.
Tuesday, 20 Oct 2009 | Posted By:
Paul Toscano | Source: CNBC.com
In the past two years, powerful figures in both Washington and Wall Street became household names as the crisis deepened, markets and corporations struggled to survive and the federal government took drastic steps to save the economy. Whether they had a crucial hand in the crisis or were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time may not be clear for years. Now, one year after the roughest stretch for the U.S. economy since the Great Depression, these financial titans have either stepped out of the spotlight or come to the end of their careers, voluntarily or not. So where they now? Click ahead to find out!
The Wall Street giants that received a financial lifeline from Washington may have no compunction about paying big bonuses to their dealmakers and traders. But their willingness to deliver “thank you” gifts to President Obama and the Democrats is another question altogether.
Failure to address the underlying weaknesses in the banking system as well as some shortcomings in the package of regulatory reforms for the financial system could result in a crisis relapse in the next few years.
One year after Lehman Brothers’ failure, former employees remain haunted and confounded by the event. “It wasn't Lehman's employees who failed; it was the leadership,” says one ex- senior manager.
As we approach the anniversary of some of the most cataclysmic failures in our economic history, we appear to be in perhaps no better position to manage the failure of an investment bank, a hedge fund or an insurance company than we were before.
This is familiar terrain for Oliver Stone: his father was a broker, and his 1987 film, “Wall Street,” became emblematic of an era of excess. Now he is here to make a sequel, to capture greed on celluloid all over again, set against the backdrop of the financial collapse.
Goldman executives are dismissive, even defiant, when critics argue that the bank is playing a heads-we-win, tails-you-lose game with American taxpayers. And yet the questions keep coming.