Too tightly wound to unravel

We’re learning a bit more about the “unprecedented powers” that President Obama and Sec. Treas. Geithner are seeking to deal with instability that exists in the financial system. But to understand what’s needed going forward, it’s important to see how we got here.
In the 1920s, commercial banks were selling stocks to their customers in addition [...]

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Ongoing stimulus debate

A commenter suggested that the funds allocated to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (aka the stimulus package) would be better spent by handing out checks to each person.  The final package comes to a bit less than $800billion or just under $2300 per person, not the $25,000 suggested in the comment.   The commenter also [...]

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Entitled to what?

When John Thain, formerly the CEO of Merrill Lynch, tried to justify his salary and bonus to Congress, I awarded him the “Let Them Eat Cake” award for his utter lack of awareness of reality.  It seems he didn’t read my open letter to him.  Instead, he spent over $1.2 million of our money (courtesy [...]

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We all need calming!

So, Fed chair Ben Bernanke says it’s essential to calm the markets.  That’s undoubtedly true so that credit doesn’t seize up completely and throw the US into a full-scale depression, taking the rest of the world along for the ride.  I’m certainly not pleased with the idea of borrowing another $700 billion to try to [...]

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Greed, human nature, and Sim City

Suddenly we’re hearing a lot of talk in Washington and from the McCain campaign about greed.  How those greedy folks on Wall Street led the rest of us down the primrose path, and how now they want us to bail them out.  It’s more than a little bit ironic that so many of those same [...]

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