A far-reaching Senate proposal to overhaul the financial system would create three new agencies, while wiping out existing ones, to monitor risky bank practices and protect consumers.
One of the fundamental tenets of a free market is that in an auction the rules of the game should not give one bidder a fundamental advantage over another bidder. Sadly, that may not have been the case last month when the FDIC oversaw the sale of Texas-based Guaranty Bank. On August 21, Sheila Bair, the chair of the FDIC, declared Spain's second-largest bank -- Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria SA -- the winner of a spirited auction to buy Guaranty Bank instead of a consortium of U.S. investors including Blackstone Group and TPG.
Now that President Obama has presented his plan to fix the way the U.S. regulates finance, it's time to assess if the plan will work. The 85-page "white paper" his Treasury Department released lays out the specifics. Now Congress will begin its ugly process of turning the proposals into law. There are some good ideas here. There's also a whole lot that may make Wall Street howl in protest.
No one said selling a regulatory reform package would be easy.
President Obama on Wednesday unveiled his long-anticipated plan to restructure how banks and other firms are regulated in the hope of preventing another financial collapse.
President Obama on Wednesday will finally announce his long-anticipated plan to restructure how banks and other firms are regulated in the hope of preventing another financial collapse.
There are plenty of ailing banks out there. But there are also lots of big investors with plenty of cash. So why haven't there been more deals between the two?
With bank stress tests out of the way, the Obama administration has turned its focus to reshaping how the government oversees financial institutions and could potentially push to consolidate regulators.
Two more banks failed Friday bringing the tally to 25 in 2009, according to the government.
U.S. financial regulators have spent the last several years in a race to impotence. The clear winner of this chase to the bottom is the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS), the agency that served as chief financial regulator to a motley crew of credit crunch losers, including Countrywide, Washington Mutual, IndyMac and American International Group. Shuttering OTS would be a good first prize.
A far-reaching Senate proposal to overhaul the financial system would create three new agencies, while wiping out existing ones, to monitor risky bank practices and protect consumers.
One of the fundamental tenets of a free market is that in an auction the rules of the game should not give one bidder a fundamental advantage over another bidder. Sadly, that may not have been the case last month when the FDIC oversaw the sale of Texas-based Guaranty Bank. On August 21, Sheila Bair, the chair of the FDIC, declared Spain's second-largest bank -- Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria SA -- the winner of a spirited auction to buy Guaranty Bank instead of a consortium of U.S. investors including Blackstone Group and TPG.
Now that President Obama has presented his plan to fix the way the U.S. regulates finance, it's time to assess if the plan will work. The 85-page "white paper" his Treasury Department released lays out the specifics. Now Congress will begin its ugly process of turning the proposals into law. There are some good ideas here. There's also a whole lot that may make Wall Street howl in protest.
No one said selling a regulatory reform package would be easy.
President Obama on Wednesday unveiled his long-anticipated plan to restructure how banks and other firms are regulated in the hope of preventing another financial collapse.
President Obama on Wednesday will finally announce his long-anticipated plan to restructure how banks and other firms are regulated in the hope of preventing another financial collapse.
There are plenty of ailing banks out there. But there are also lots of big investors with plenty of cash. So why haven't there been more deals between the two?
With bank stress tests out of the way, the Obama administration has turned its focus to reshaping how the government oversees financial institutions and could potentially push to consolidate regulators.
Two more banks failed Friday bringing the tally to 25 in 2009, according to the government.
U.S. financial regulators have spent the last several years in a race to impotence. The clear winner of this chase to the bottom is the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS), the agency that served as chief financial regulator to a motley crew of credit crunch losers, including Countrywide, Washington Mutual, IndyMac and American International Group. Shuttering OTS would be a good first prize.
It may seem obvious: Increasing how much troubled borrowers pay on their mortgage leads to redefaults. But that didn't stop America's banks.
The Obama administration unveiled plans Wednesday aimed at assessing the health of the nation's 19 largest banks in order to determine the size and scope of future bailouts.
The man arrested in the mailing of 65 threatening letters to banks and federal offices apparently had been irate about losing thousands of dollars in stock when a bank failed, a criminal complaint states.
Three regional banks were closed Friday, bringing the total number of failed banks this month to six, as the financial crisis continues to take a toll on small banks nationwide.
Cash-strapped consumers got some welcome news on Thursday when regulators voted to rein in controversial credit card practices. But they'll have to wait another year and a half to get relief - the new rules won't take effect until July 1, 2010.
Cash-strapped consumers might get some welcome news on Thursday when regulators vote to rein in controversial credit card practices.
Three more banks - two in California and one in Georgia - failed Friday, bringing to 22 the number of institutions forced to close in the wake of the financial crisis.
Four insurance companies applied Friday to become thrift holding companies and acquire savings and loans, which opens the door for them to seek bailout funds.
When the Treasury Department first unveiled its plan to buy stakes in banks last month, the move was heralded as a potential savior for fast-sinking banks and financial firms.
The number of banks and other agencies reporting that they have received angry letters containing a powdery substance has risen to 45 in 11 states, and there could be more cases, FBI officials said Wednesday.
The FBI and the Postal Inspection Service are investigating more than 30 angry letters containing a white powdery substance recently sent to banks, officials said Tuesday.
The government's latest assessment of the nation's financial system showed that many more small banks are in trouble. But what the report didn't say may speak volumes.
California bank IndyMac will reopen as a "strong and safe institution" under federal management and a new name Monday, days after regulators closed it, the firm's new CEO said Sunday.
In what could turn out to be the most expensive bank failure ever, troubled mortgage lender IndyMac Bancorp Inc. was taken over by federal regulators on Friday.
Sen. Charles Schumer said Sunday the Bush administration is trying to "blame the fire on the person who calls 911" by suggesting he had a role in one of the costliest U.S. bank failures.
IndyMac has become the latest mortgage lender to announce what is by now a familiar routine to battered investors: Shuttered business lines, failed attempts at capital raising and massive layoffs. A look at how it got here shows the risks of dominating a lending niche it had long argued was minimally risky: low documentation loans to residential mortgage borrowers with middling (at best) credit profiles.
The Federal Reserve on Friday pushed ahead with a proposal to stop abuses by credit card issuers, a day after two other key bank regulatory agencies proposed effectively the same package of new rules.
The federal government is keeping Bear Stearns out of bankruptcy. Are you next?
Mortgage delinquencies and foreclosures will continue to rise for a while longer and further declines in house prices are likely, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Tuesday.
A plan that would help troubled mortgage borrowers today - and might make lenders whole later on - was unveiled Wednesday in Washington.
The Bush Administration's mortgage rate freeze sounds like a life raft for strapped homeowners, but it may do more harm than good
The Federal Reserve and other banking regulators issued special guidance Tuesday urging loan service companies to work with borrowers in danger of defaulting on their home mortgages.
U.S. bank regulators Friday tightened standards for mortgage lending in a bid to curtail risky practices that have been blamed for a record level of foreclosures.
Banking regulators came under fire in the Senate Thursday, with pointed questions on why they didn't do more in advance of the subprime lending crisis.
AMID THE DEVASTATION CAUSED BY Hurricane Katrina, it's perhaps not surprising that a major ruling in one of the longest-running and downright weirdest legal battles between a businessman and the go...
Feeling nervous about real estate prices? Who can blame you? Even if you haven't bought or sold lately, the constant debate over whether or not there's a housing bubble is probably making you uneas...
Feeling nervous about real estate prices? Who can blame you? Even if you haven't bought or sold lately, the constant debate over whether or not there's a housing bubble is probably making you uneasy.
Goldman Sachs wants to get into the savings and loan business. So do Paine Webber, AIG, Ford, State Farm, GE Capital, and at least 19 other companies--most of them insurers.
Are you the sort of soul who trusts your bank to send accurate bills for your adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM) and home-equity line (HEL)? If so, take a look at this court case: In December, First Na...
AFTER THE ELECTION, Congress will finally have to face something it has been avoiding for more than six months: appropriating the funds to continue cleaning up the savings and loan industry. That e...
In the four months since Congress decided not to extend funding for the S&L bailout, disposing of insolvent thrifts has ground to a costly standstill. This means the U.S. can't pay off depositors a...
IN THIS BATTLE of regulatory titans, Richard Breeden, head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, weighs in at seven pounds, zero ounces. Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board a...
Why would a sick savings and loan call Tom Wageman? After all, two struggling S&Ls went under on his watch. Still, San Diego's HomeFed Corp., parent of the nation's seventh-largest thrift, hired hi...
You have probably never heard of them, and after you read this, you'll likely wish you never had. They're the 712 troubled savings and loans (with more than $250 billion in deposits) that were effe...
Until this year, no savings and loan rated three stars by bank analysts at Veribanc of Wakefield, Mass. had failed (though some had gone bust some time after being downgraded). That record ended on...
WHETHER they were really speaking to bankers or to their own troops, the regulators who in early May urged banks not to be too tough on customers were responding to growing anxiety about a possible...
Weak demand for the first $5 billion in savings and loan bailout agency bonds increased yields to 8.65% from 8.55%, adding $200 million to the cost of the rescue. The Resolution Trust Corporation h...
HANS BLIX, 61, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency at the U.N., on the prospects for revived interest in nuclear power: ''Every year takes us further from Chernobyl and closer to the gre...
Based on a reference to him in the Almanac of American Politics, we had always assumed that U.S. Senator Alan Dixon was relatively harmless. (''Among the least known of all Senators'' was how the A...
To bail out the corrupt and capsizing savings and loan industry, the Administration and Congress spent six months and committed $166 billion -- not to mention more than 1,000 pages of legislation, ...
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