This week, the single most important event in global bond markets was the S&P downgrade of Greece’s long-term debt obligations, A- to BBB+. Moody’s is the last of the major rating agencies to hold Greek debt in the A-category of investment grade (currently at A1); but a major decision from Moody’s could come within weeks. […]

Good Thing We Have Deficit Hawks in Congress: The tenants were all living low-rent under a program that’s beginning to expire – but had been promised they could still qualify for a federal Section 8 rent subsidy. But this week, when many of them began to show up at New York City Housing Authority offices, […]

But Steve Randy Waldman already did the heavy lifting: several of the other officers had been stationed at the height of the housing bubble at facilities located near D.C. in Northern Virginia. They lived in very modest homes which were removed from their workplaces by substantial driving distances, but these homes were nevertheless particularly pricey […]

Down here it’s just winners and losersAnd don’t get caught on the wrong side of that line This will be a long post. Even with all the pictures above the fold. It started with a finger exercise during my daughter’s swim team practice: Just in case you thought I was picking on The Big C […]

by Bruce Webb I posted the below last Christmas Eve. Which was too late to actually discuss the issue. People decry the commercialization of Christmas, which is fair enough. And on econoblogs we discuss income inequality a lot, plus we wonder why working class people simply accept the logic of “no poor person ever gave […]

UPDATE: It gets even stranger. The bankrupt-since-October-2008 Lehman Brothers is going to pay $50,000,000 in bonuses for this year. (h/t alea’s Twitter feed) It appears all of the “gosh, we really made a lot of money from bailing out rich bankers who socked it to their customers” rhetoric is having a small problem in the […]

Economic Populist points us to consideration of re-instating the Glass-Steagall Act. Plain vanilla banking at a tidy profit for regular banking functions is still a good idea.

by Linda Beale (cross posted from ataxingmatter) Banks exiting TARP Citibank has confirmed its plans to pay back the bailout funds directly provided to it. See NY Times. Of course, the fact that banks are paying back direct bailout funds does not mean that there is no further bank bailout going on. The government now […]