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This is a post which was originally published at A Fistful of Euros.
José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Spain’s prime minister, said in Davos this week: “We are a serious country and we will fulfil our promises.”

With these words Spain’s Prime Minister sought, during [...]

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Paul Volcker is testifying before the Senate Banking Committee today on financial regulatory reform. Recently, the Obama introduced reform proposals inspired by Volcker and now being dubbed The Volcker Rule.
The Wall Street Journal has done a good job over the past two weeks of outlining the internal politics, details and potential effects of the Volcker [...]

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Below is a partial list of December FDIC enforcement decisions and orders. I have only included cease-and-desist orders, prompt corrective action notices and termination of insurance orders as these are the signs of banking system distress.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) today released a list of orders of administrative enforcement actions taken against banks and [...]

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Exactly three months ago, I told you to expect bankruptcy in the record Stuyvesant Town real estate deal. Today, this is exactly what we got:
A group led by Tishman Speyer Properties has decided to give up the sprawling Peter Cooper Village and Stuyvesant Town apartment complex in Manhattan to its creditors in the collapse of [...]

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Hat tip Prieur du Plessis

Source
20 Jan 2010 editorial cartoon – Nick Anderson, Comics.com

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The poll results are in on why President Obama has begun a ‘War on Wall Street.’ A majority of CW readers believe President Obama’s recent populist turn and harsh rhetoric directed toward Wall Street is a political stunt. And to the degree CW readers believe otherwise, they see the latest salvos as only a start. [...]

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I picked up this Robert Reich quote from Politico’s Open Mic section, which echoes the sentiments expressed by a Massachusetts voter in my recent post “President Obama, are you listening?”:
A third political party is emerging in America. Call it the I’m-Mad-As-Hell party.
It’s a mistake to see the Mad-As-Hell party as just a right-wing phenomenon [...]

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This is pretty major stuff: Goldman recorded negative compensation in Q4 as zero bonuses are accruing for the quarter.
Reuters says:
The bank recorded negative compensation expense in the fourth quarter because of the contribution to Goldman Sachs Gives, the firm’s charitable arm.
The compensation total was far below the record $20.2 billion the firm paid in 2007, [...]

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That’s the gist of yesterday’s post by James Pethoukoukis.  The column says:
A historic victory, really. It is hard to overstate just how “blue” a state Massachusetts is. Obama won it by 26 percentage points in 2008. Until now the state’s 10 U.S House members, two U.S. senators and all statewide officers were Democrats. The state [...]

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Today President Obama is set to propose wide-ranging moves on bank regulation first proposed by his economic advisor Paul Volcker, the former Federal Reserve Chairman. Details of the proposal have yet to be released. However, the focus is expected to center on strict bank size limits and a limitation on proprietary trading at regulated banks [...]