The New Yorker‘s John Cassidy has an exceedingly good take on Ben Bernanke’s performance today in front of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission.
Part of his testimony was nothing new. “The only way we could have saved Lehman would have been by breaking the law,” he said, using the old reference to the Federal Read More
In prepared remarks delivered to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission today, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke said it’s super important that the government establish a way to wind down behemoth financial institutions, and that elimination of the “too-big-to-fail” phenomenon is key to averting any future crisis.
“The creation of a resolution regime for systemically critical Read More
In response to ex-Lehman Brothers CEO Dick Fuld’s fulminating testimony before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, Federal Reserve lawyer Scott Alvarez scoffs that the Fed couldn’t have done much to stay the investment bank’s execution at the hands of the credit markets.
Alvarez took Fuld’s assertions out to the woodshed, saying that Lehman Read More
A couple weeks before the two-year anniversary of his former firm’s collapse, a testy Dick Fuld is testifying today before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. From his prepared remarks, here’s a list of excuses he’s running by government officials.
• First of all, “the incorrect perception and accompanying rumors that Lehman did not have sufficient Read More
• The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, which like the 9/11 Commission, only for the Panic of 2008, may have trouble writing a comprehensive report, because senior staff have left in droves and bickering plagues those who remain. [NYT]
• Back in 2007, China asked the Fed if could buy 10% of Morgan Stanley. Yesterday, the Read More
Back in the wild days of September 2008, the Times reported that A.I.G., or rather the entire economy, had been brought to the edge of the abyss by a terrifying former Drexel Burnham Lambert executive who controlled a “freewheeling little 377-person unit” in A.I.G.’s London wing.
That man, Joseph J. Cassano, has been one Read More
It was only two months ago that Lloyd Blankfein, in one of the all time great Wall Street communication goofs, tried to argue that his firm Goldman Sachs was doing “God’s work.” He didn’t learn his lesson. At the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission’s magnificently testy first public hearing today, Mr. Blankfein blamed the Read More
