Articles About Financial Crisis

President Barack Obama’s crackdown on Wall Street excesses could be hampered if the incoming Republican-controlled Congress refuses to fund two crucial regulatory agencies.  The Dodd-Frank financial reform law – passed with heavy Democratic support – promised a generous budget to regulate the $600 trillion over-the-counter derivatives market.  Now, the law’s implementation may be derailed by […]

The Federal Reserve – in a highly unusual action – is defending its recent purchase of Treasury bonds in an effort to get the U.S. economy moving. Critics of the decision to purchase additional assets, led by former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan, conservative economists and writers, representatives of foreign governments – not to mention Sarah […]

The Obama administration – fresh from its financial regulation reform legislative victory – is not resting on its laurels.  Next on the busy agenda is reforming the American housing market, which is viewed by many as the root of the financial crisis. In a response to collapsing housing prices and waves of foreclosures, the administration […]

After nearly two years of waiting, watching and hoping, American commercial real estate is finally regaining strength. This is one conclusion of the Reuters Global Real Estate and Infrastructure Summit held recently in New York City.  Starting in the fall of 2008, real estate investors feared there would be a wide-ranging sell-off of debt-laden commercial […]

The $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) is turning out to be a better bet than many thought at first. According to the Treasury Department, the amount of money repaid by banks and other recipients now exceeds TARP’s outstanding balance.  In a monthly report to Congress on the program, TARP repayments total $194 billion; […]

Advance planning has put the heavily trafficked Internet destination and online media company Yahoo! in a sound position to develop a planned 3,000,000 SF campus in a high-profile location in Santa Clara, CA.  Yahoo! purchased the 48-acre site in 2006 – well before the financial crisis and increased competition from Google and Facebook.  Although no […]

In a rare moment of bipartisanship, the Senate voted 96 – 0 to attach a modified version of an amendment proposed by Sen. Bernard Sanders (I-VT) to the financial regulatory bill to investigate transparency in emergency lending practices by the Federal Reserve during the financial crisis.  “This amendment begins the process of lifting the veil […]

The nation’s pay czar is widening his review of how much money hundreds of banks paid their top executives during the 2008 financial crisis. Kenneth R. Feinberg, officially the Special Master for Executive Compensation, is asking for details on compensation at 419 banks that were bailed out by the Treasury Department’s Troubled Asset Relief Program […]

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is starting to look at ways to back off from the central bank’s heroic efforts to keep the nation’s economy afloat through the financial crisis of the past 18 months. The trick to raising short-term interest rates, which have been at historic lows for more than a year, is to […]

London has overtaken Washington, D.C., as the preferred city for commercial real estate investment,  primarily because investors believe that prices have bottomed out and the time to get into that market is now. The British capital has overtaken the previous favorites of Washington, D.C., and New York, according to a survey conducted by the Association […]