Forums: Financial Crisis Of 2007–2010

Financial Crisis Commission Examining WachoviaSeptember 1, 2010 Rick Rothacker The panel investigating the U.S. financial meltdown will put Charlotte's Wachovia Corp. under the microscope on Wednesday. The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission on Monday said former Wachovia chief executive Bob Steel will be one of the witnesses at a hearing in Washington. He will be joined by Scott Alvarez, the Federal Reserve System's general counsel, and John Corston, acting deputy director of supervision and consumer protection at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Former Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. CEO Dick Fuld is slated to testify in an afternoon session. Federal Reserve Chairman...

GFC possibly a male crisisBy Caroline Munro 1 September 2010 The global financial crisis (GFC) was perhaps a male crisis that could have had a softer landing if there were more women in the banking and finance sector, according to Italian economist and journalist, Loretta Napoleoni. Napoleoni was a key note speaker at the Women in Banking and Finance annual forum, hosted in Sydney last night by Deutsche Bank, which also included panel speakers NSW Premier Kristina Keneally, Carnival Australia chief executive, Ann Sherry, and journalist and author, Mia Freedman. Napoleoni said the cause of the GFC has been attributed...

It is “financial jihad,” explained Yusuf Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood’s sharia compass — and the man Feisal Rauf, the brains behind the proposed Ground Zero mosque, admires as “the most well-known legal authority in the whole Muslim world today.” It was 2002 and Qaradawi, who endorses suicide bombing and the targeting of American personnel operating in Islamic countries, was giving a lecture on the need to use the international financial system to support Islamist goals — like Hamas’s war to destroy Israel. The financial jihad has now achieved its greatest coup so far: It has co-opted the U.S. government as...

Michael Snyder writes: Today there is a horrific derivatives bubble that threatens to destroy not only the U.S. economy but the entire world financial system as well, but unfortunately the vast majority of people do not understand it. When you say the word "derivatives" to most Americans, they have no idea what you are talking about. In fact, even most members of the U.S. Congress don't really seem to understand them. But you don't have to get into all the technicalities to understand the bigger picture. Basically, derivatives are financial instruments whose value depends upon or is derived from the...

The government commission tasked with writing a public report to expose the causes of the financial crisis is keeping the structure of its own publishing deal private. On Aug. 3, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, a presidential body, announced that it had chosen Little, Brown and Co. to publish its final report about the meltdown -- an anticipated and authoritative account pieced together by well-known journalist Matt Cooper. It did not mention, however, that the deal had unusual terms for the publication of a public document, including an agreement by Little, Brown to pay an advance to the government and...

Greece’s olive-clad hillsides and turquoise sea gleam as enticingly as ever under the hot August sun. But the country’s image as a relaxed Mediterranean destination has been taking a beating. Thousands of tourists were stuck beside the hotel pool last week because of a truckers’ strike that shut down petrol stations across the country. The strikes also triggered a wave of last-minute cancellations by Greeks in advance of the August break – the busiest period of the tourist season. “The strike’s been suspended – but the cancellations still stand. It’s turning out to be a very difficult season,” said Yannis...

SEC Says New Financial Regulation Law Exempts it From Public Disclosure By Dunstan Prial So much for transparency. Under a little-noticed provision of the recently passed financial-reform legislation, the Securities and Exchange Commission no longer has to comply with virtually all requests for information releases from the public, including those filed under the Freedom of Information Act. The law, signed last week by President Obama, exempts the SEC from disclosing records or information derived from "surveillance, risk assessments, or other regulatory and oversight activities." Given that the SEC is a regulatory body, the provision covers almost every action by the...

Retirement will be risky for many Americans, study saysBY DAVID NICKLAUS Posted: Wednesday, July 21, 2010 1:20 pm More than 40 percent of Americans are at risk of having too little retirement income, a new study by the Employee Benefit Research Institute says. What's more, the oldest workers are the least prepared to quit working. The EBRI says that 47% of early Baby Boomers are at risk of running out of money in retirement, compared with 44.5 percent of Generation Xers. For some people, retirement savings won't last very long at all. Among the lowest-income quarter of the working population,...

Battle brews over director for new Consumer Financial Protection BureauThe agency with the power to make rules for credit cards, mortgages and other products is created as Obama signs the financial overhaul law. By Jim Puzzanghera, Los Angeles Times July 22, 2010 Reporting from Washington — President Obama reversed decades of lax oversight of the financial industry Wednesday by signing a landmark overhaul of regulations, but he still faces a major task — appointing a director for the powerful new agency charged with protecting consumers from unscrupulous deals.

Financial follies Commentary: Wall Street reform does nothing for Main StreetBy Chuck Jaffe, MarketWatch BOSTON (MarketWatch) -- It took Congress about 2,400 pages to document its plan for reforming America's financial system, but the appropriate reaction for the nation's consumers can be summed up in just three words: Thanks for nothing. The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act is a big sham, and all of the back-slapping and spin-doctoring that will hail it as a grand success as it gets signed into law is pure hogwash. If the premise of this legislative exercise was to promote substantive change...