TARP investments yield 15% returns. Almost trom the start, critics characterized the TARP program that first began under the Bush administration and that continued through early this year under President Obama as a taxpayer funded giveaway, while government officials insisted it was a long-term investment program whose initial costs would eventually turn a profit as economic recovery began. Now the NY Times reports that the program has already yielded $4 billion in profits, and a separate report reveals that related Federal Reserve loan programs aimed at economic stabilization have returned $14 billion in profits.
posted by saulgoodman on Aug 31, 2009 - 119 comments

President Obama has announced he will seek broad new authority to regulate the financial derivatives markets. As has been discussed many times previously here on the blue, the massive unregulated financial derivatives markets (estimated to be in excess of hundreds of trillions of dollars in overall scale) have been one of the major contributing and complicating factors in the current global financial crisis. [more inside]
posted by saulgoodman on May 13, 2009 - 43 comments

Who will be our era's Duncan Fletcher? Fed up with widespread financial sector double-dealing, profiteering and opportunism in the aftermath of the 1929 stock market crash that triggered the Great Depression, a soft-spoken, conservative Democrat senator from Jacksonville, Florida stepped up to play an instrumental role in shaping post-Depression era financial policies. [more inside]
posted by saulgoodman on Mar 23, 2009 - 31 comments

Newsweek discusses Obama's "War on the Rich," a timely story, considering Bloomberg's recent christening of the "Obama Bear Market." And on a tangential note, TPM points out that those bankruptcy law reforms enacted under the Bush administration specifically included new provisions aggressively lobbied for by the "International Swaps and Derivatives Association," which were designed to protect the derivatives and swap industries. Yet another example of good timing. [more inside]
posted by saulgoodman on Mar 6, 2009 - 58 comments