Josh Rosner, a Managing Director at Graham Fisher & Company, an independent research for institutional investors in financial service assets, has some pretty strong words for the reform legislation proposed by the Obama Administration and now making its way to Congress. On Bloomberg, he said it favors large too big to fail institutions and hurts [...]

Robert Johnson, director of the Economic Policy Initiative of the Roosevelt Institute, has been extremely critical of the US Government’s handling of matters related to financial services.
This past October 7, he gave testimony at the House of Representatives financial Services Committee expressing some of his concerns.  Not only was his testimony cut short, but [...]

I am listening to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner answer questions before the House Financial Services Committee and he seems to be talking the talk, but his Administration is not walking the walk. 
The bill he is aggressively defending calls for putting a resolution process in place which ostensibly allows the cost of the failure of [...]

This comes via the FT:
Saudi Arabia on Wednesday decided to drop the widely used West Texas Intermediate oil contract as the benchmark for pricing its oil, dealing a serious blow to the New York Mercantile Exchange.
The decision by the world’s biggest oil exporter could encourage other producers to abandon the benchmark and threatens the [...]

Every time I hear the word ‘bureaucrat’ used to make a point for or against government’s role in the economy, I cringe. I see this label as unfair and dehumanizing.
I grew up in Washington , D.C. where my parents and their friends rose through the ranks of government, often to the very managerial positions which [...]

This comes via the NYTimes:
To the Editor:
Re “Volcker’s Voice, Often Heeded, Fails to Sell a Bank Strategy” (front page, Oct. 21):
As another older banker and one who has experienced both the pre- and post-Glass-Steagall world, I would agree with Paul A. Volcker (and also Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England) that some kind [...]

It seems that not a day goes by when you don’t hear about some asset sale in Citigroup’s far-flung empire. Of all the major too-big-to-fail institutions, it is easily the most troubled: the poster child for everything that is wrong in finance in America.
But, when President Obama’s Pay Czar Kenneth Feinberg stepped in to [...]

In the months since I began this website, I have had some fairly harsh things to say about economic policy in the U.S., the U.K. and elsewhere. I have consistently condemned what I think is a captured government promoting an unstable financial system and a bloated financial sector. But, I have made a conscious effort [...]

The casino is open for business.

This contribution from Daniel Berger is a letter to Michael Smerconish in response to a commentary Smerconish wrote on 10 May 2009 in the Philadelphia Inquirer “Head Strong: Did Hollywood inspire the meltdown men?” A shorter version of Berger’s piece appeared at New Deal 2.0 in July.
Given my recent two posts on greed (“More on [...]