The Office of the Small Business Advocate has this news:
Continue reading “Stimulus News Digest #10 – November 2009 | California Office of the Small Business Advocate”
Tag: financial crisis
Judge blasts bad bank, erases 525G debt | NYPOST.com
The government has been backing up to the back doors of these institutions, unloading truckloads of cash. Many have used the funds to purchase other banks or shore up their balance sheets; few have passed any relief to their customers. The backlash against them has primarily been debt repudiation (bankruptcy and foreclosure) and now, debt cancellation.
Spinner excoriated OneWest for repeatedly refusing to work out a deal, for misleading him about the dollar amounts at stake in the case, and for its treatment of the couple over months of hearings.
OneWest’s conduct was “inequitable, unconscionable, vexatious and opprobrious,” Spinner wrote.
He canceled the debt because the bank “must be appropriately sanctioned so as to deter it from imposing further mortifying abuse against [the couple].”
The bank is involved in a similar case in California, where it’s trying to foreclose on an 89-year-old woman, despite two court orders telling it to stop.
Different Bus, Same Driver – Harvard ignored warnings about investments | The Boston Globe
The very thing that the former endowment chiefs had worried about and warned of for so long then came to pass. Amid plunging global markets, Harvard would lose not only 27 percent of its $37 billion endowment in 2008, but $1.8 billion of the general operating cash – or 27 percent of some $6 billion invested. Harvard also would pay $500 million to get out of the interest-rate swaps Summers had entered into, which imploded when rates fell instead of rising. The university would have to issue $1.5 billion in bonds to shore up its cash position, on top of another $1 billion debt sale. And there were layoffs, pay freezes, and deep, university-wide budget cuts.
Should the U.S. Continue Its Stimulus-Program Payouts? | TIME
For now the weak dollar is helping America’s exports. But it is also spooking holders of U.S. debt, whose continued purchases of U.S. Treasury bills allow Washington to fund its deficit spending. Last week, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) announced that the Reserve Bank of India had bought 200 tons of IMF gold reserves, the biggest single purchase by a central bank in 30 years. That pushed the price of gold past $1,100 an ounce, the latest record breaker in a string of new highs, as the market anticipated gold buying by other central banks to hedge against a falling dollar.
Reed Says ‘I’m Sorry’ for Role in Creating Citigroup (Update1) – Bloomberg.com
“When you’re running a company, you do what you think is right for the stockholders. Right now I’m looking at this as a citizen.”
When you pick private interests over what’s right for the country, isn’t that treason?
How Do You Pull Off a Ponzi Scheme? : Stupid Regulators | Securities and Exchange Commission Files
Don’t worry about government regulating health care, get them to regulate the financial markets:
Madoff said it was “amazing to me” that he didn’t get caught … because they specifically asked him, “Are these securities at DTC? (Depository Trust and Clearing Corp.)” They further pressed, “What is your account number.” He replied, “646.” Madoff stated that it was “obvious they thought that something was amiss.” He went on to say that when they asked for the DTC account number, “I thought it was the end game, over. Monday morning they’ll call DTC and this will be over… and it never happened.”
Madoff stated that when … Enforcement did not follow up with DTC, “I was astonished.”
But the real question is, can the industry be regulated at all:
Madoff noted that the industry is growing incredibly complicated. He gave the example of when his firm put up a credit default swap and didn’t know how to do the books. Madoff said he didn’t know … He said he called Merrill Lynch, Lehman Bros, five firms total, all of which didn’t know. He said the NASD had no clue. Madoff stated that today, lots of trades are done off the books because people don’t know what to do with them.
The Value of the “Too Big to Fail” Big Bank Subsidy | Dean Baker and Travis McArthur
‘Too Big to Fail’ banks have nearly a one percent advantage over small banks, a $34 billion dollar subsidy.
This piece deals with one of the many consequences of the bail out.
Consumer Spending Falls In September, Biggest Drop In Nine Months
By Martin Crutsinger – Huffington Post
WASHINGTON — Consumer spending plunged in September by the largest amount in nine months, reflecting the end of the government’s Cash for Clunkers auto sales program. Incomes, the fuel for future spending, were flat.
While the government reported that the overall economy grew in the July-September period, signaling the end of the worst recession in seven decades, the weakness in spending and incomes as the quarter ended underscores the fragility of the recovery.
Continue reading “Consumer Spending Falls In September, Biggest Drop In Nine Months”
Recovery Task Force Announces $156 Million in Recovery Act Funds Now Available for Energy Efficiency and Solar Projects
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s California Recovery Task Force today announced that more than $156 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (Recovery Act) funds are now available for application for energy efficiency and solar projects in California. A package of options under the State Energy Program (SEP) and the Energy Efficient and Conservation Block Grants (EECBG) Program offer local jurisdictions, non-profits and private organizations the opportunity to invest in energy efficiency and photovoltaic energy projects – while helping to stimulate their local economies. Governor Schwarzenegger announced that California was the first state in the nation to apply federally for SEP funding available under the Recovery Act.
Back in the U.S.S.R.: The secret Paulson-Goldman meeting | Blogs | Reuters
This
meeting took place between Hank Paulson, then Treasury Secretary and the Board of Goldman Sachs, in Moscow, in secret. This was two months before the collapse and subsequent bailout.
Goldman Sachs was a hugely powerful for-profit investment bank, and there he is, giving private chapter and verse on his opinions about the US and global economy, talking about internal Treasury matters, and previewing an upcoming (and surely market-moving) speech. All in secret, at a “social event” which somehow got kept off his official calendar.
Dispatches From The Front 