Cinco años en la peor crisis en ocho décadas y el mundo financiero sigue sin cambios significativos. Aquí se localizó el epicentro del terremoto y las reformas a su sistema regulatorio debían impedir una nueva debacle. Pero el poderío del sector financiero y bancario ha impedido que se apliquen restricciones a su actividad especulativa. La [...]

JPM Derivatives Prop Up US Debt When Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase Bank, appeared before the Senate Banking Committee on June 13, he was wearing cufflinks bearing the presidential seal.  “Was Dimon trying to send any particular message by wearing the presidential cufflinks?” asked CNBC editor John Carney.  “Was he . . . subtly hinting [...]

Source: Robert Reich’s Blog by Robert Reich November 29, 2009 One out of four homeowners is now under water, owing more on their homes than the homes are worth. Why? The biggest single factor behind the housing crisis is rising unemployment. According to the latest ABC-Washington Post poll, one out of every three Americans has either lost their [...]

por AFP October 13, 2009 WASHINGTON – US banks and securities firms could pay a record 140 billion dollars to its staff this year, a rebound in compensations that comes despite regulatory scrutiny of Wall Street pay culture, a report said Wednesday. Workers at 23 top investment banks, hedge funds, asset managers and stock and commodities exchanges can [...]

HSBC earned more than £650m in fees from work for Textron, US manufacturer of cluster weapons by Nick Mathiason October 29, 2009 The deadly trade in cluster bombs is funded by the world’s biggest banks who have loaned or arranged finance worth $20bn (£12.5bn) to firms producing the controversial weapons, despite growing international efforts to ban them. HSBC, led [...]

by Matthew Jaffe October 5, 2009 WASHINGTON – The Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve lied to the American public last fall when they said that the first nine banks to receive government bailout funds were healthy, a government watchdog states in a new report released today. Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief [...]

by Chris Adams October 4, 2009 WASHINGTON — The federal government is engaged in a massive mortgage modification program that’s on track to send billions in tax dollars to many of the very companies that judges or regulators have cited in recent years for abusive mortgage practices. The firms, called mortgage servicers, have been cited for badgering, manipulating [...]

por Sam Pizzigati 7 de septiembre, 2009 Los investigadores del Institute for Policy Studies, un think tank progresista en Washington D.C., publican desde 1994 anualmente un informe sobre los salarios de los ejecutivos. La última edición de este Executive Excess recién acaba de aparecer. ¿El veredicto del informe? En lo que se refiere a los salarios de [...]

by Alyssa Katz September 30, 2009 During the real estate bubble, older urban neighborhoods across the nation, from Atlanta to Baltimore to Cleveland to Sacramento and countless communities in between fell victim to a devastating plague of predatory lending and mortgage fraud. This was enabled by Wall Street’s bottomless appetite for financing home loans, lenders’ lax standards, and [...]

A Scorecard for the Future of American Politics by Andy Kroll September 15, 2009 At the end of this summer of discontent, of death panels and unplugging poor Grandma, of birthers and astroturfers and rifle-toting picketers, the halcyon early days of the Obama administration feel increasingly like hazy, gilt-edged memories. The president’s sprawling legislative agenda — a health-care [...]