James Tilson and Robert E. Prasch follow the money at New Economic Perspectives regarding the AIG bailout and a more accurate sense of costs. “If it’s too good to be true, it probably is.” This old adage came to mind on December 11, 2012 when the U.S. Treasury made the announcement, reiterated unthinkingly by the […]
by Linda Beale Calculating the Cost of Bailouts A recent New York Times includes a piece on the Treasury’s study of the various bailouts or “rescues” of distressed financial and other institutions. Gretchen Morgenson, Seeing Bailouts Through Rose-Colored Glasses, New York Times (May 19, 2012). The Treasury study, The Financial Crisis Response–in charts (April 13, […]
We are taking a little side trip inthis series of defining rich based on the prior tax rate schedulesbut, this post is keeping with the process of looking at history formarkers as to the definition of rich. For any new readers, I believeas a society we knew and had definite boundaries as to what definedrich. […]
byMike Kimel Barry Ritholtz points us to a Bloomberg article showing, once again, that when it came to measures to prop up the economy in 2008, some animals are more equal than others: Paulson explained that under this scenario, the common stock of the two government-sponsored enterprises, or GSEs, would be effectively wiped out. So […]
UPDATE NOTE: The following isn’t complete. Many of my notes from the latter part of today’s interview can be found on Twitter, hashtagged #Immelt. At the moment, I both (1) don’t have easy access to them and (2) have other things that need to be done. Feel free to look there, and/or mention anything you […]
From his column in today’s FT: Even this is too simple, once one allows for banking: Ireland’s net debt was a mere 12% of GDP in 2007 In other words, in FT World, privatizing the profit and socializing the risk is A Great Idea that deserves the full support of the government.
Guest post by Steve Roth crossposted at Asymptosis Too Big to Fail? Wall Street and Main Street: How Big Are They People are forever talking about banks that are too big to fail. But you rarely hear about the larger issue: The financial industry is too big to fail. Click for larger graphic.) Note that […]
The readers of the Fiscal Times learn what everyone looking at the alphabet-soup of back-door taxpayer theft (or, as Ben Bernanke calls them, facilities) knows: There are many ways policy could have been improved; providing more help for state and local governments is high on the list, but I’ll focus on another way: using fiscal […]
LA Times (via John Chait). The projected cost of the $700-billion financial bailout fund — initially feared to be a huge hit to taxpayers — continues to drop, with the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimating Monday that losses would amount to just $25 billion. That’s a sharp drop from the CBO’s last estimate, in August, […]
What Treasury under Geither does, according to the Washington Post: “I think we are known as the front line,” said [Michael] Pedroni, 38, a former International Monetary Fund economist and Federal Reserve Bank of New York employee who has spent time at a Wall Street research firm. “Our analysis is meant to be very candid, […]