Articles About Financing

Simon Johnson, a professor at M.I.T.’s Sloan School of Management and former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, raises the question of “As we move closer to a Senate – and presumably national – debate on financial reform, the central technical and political question is:  What would prevent any bank or similar institute from […]

Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT), chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, introduced revised legislation to regulate the nation’s financial system.  The plan would create a nine-member council, led by the Treasury secretary, to be on the alert for systemic risks, and direct the Federal Reserve to oversee the nation’s largest and most interconnected financial institutions. The […]

The Federal Reserve is ending its purchase of mortgage-backed securities, a sign of confidence that the nation’s economic recovery is well underway.  At the same time, the Fed voted to retain its benchmark interest rate at approximately zero percent, because of remaining economic weakness and the lack of inflation.  According to the Fed, it will […]

The Obama administration has announced a new initiative to assist troubled homeowners by helping them refinance with government-backed mortgages that cut monthly payments.  The program would also temporarily reduce payments for unemployed borrowers who are actively job hunting.  The government is encouraging lenders to write down the value of loans for borrowers participating in modification […]

A draft of President Barack Obama’s financial reform legislation has been sent to Congress.  Dubbed the Volcker Rule in honor of the former Federal Reserve chairman’s  aggressive pursuit of these regulations, the five-page proposal will ban proprietary trading and mergers that give banks more than a 10 percent market share as measured by liabilities that […]

The Congressional Budget Office has determined that the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) will cost the government $109 billion – just 16 percent of the $700 billion set aside to rescue the nation from the great recession.  Insurance giant AIG and the auto industry are TARP’s largest beneficiaries. The federal government bought $40 billion in […]

A decade before the financial meltdown, one woman was sounding the alarm that a catastrophe was coming.  That woman is Brooksley Born, who correctly predicted that investments known as over-the-counter derivatives could cause a financial crisis.  As Chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) during the second Clinton administration, Born would wake up “in […]

Despite the Snowmageddon that crippled Washington, D.C. and much of the East Coast during February, the economy continued to grow at a modest rate.  This is the opinion of the Federal Reserve’s newly issued Beige Book report – officially known as the “Summary of Commentary on Current Economics Conditions by Federal Reserve District” — which […]

A little-noticed bill was introduced in Congress in January that could bring a new source of liquidity to the commercial real estate sector – foreign investment.  Legislation introduced by Congressman Joseph Crowley (D-NY) called the Real Estate Revitalization Act of 2010 would cut taxes that were introduced as part of the Foreign Investment Real Estate […]

Economic indicators show that the recession is over.  This is the opinion of Rick Mattoon, a senior economist and advisor in the economic research department of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and a lecturer at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.  Rick’s primary research focuses on issues facing the Midwest regional economy. […]