Additional Economic Stimulus – Another Thought

Guest Contributor Wayne Nelson

Much is being made of the unwillingness of the financial industry to lend money in this current environment of uncertainty. For those of us who were around during the S&L debacle of the late ‘80’s and early ‘90’s, this comes as no surprise. It became very clear that lessons not learned were destined to be repeated. The major distinctions between then and now were (1) financial institutions were not too big to fail back then, and many did; and (2) there are more financial products that nobody understands out there now than there were back then.

It is clear that lending is still being ...

Taxing Wall Street with Righteous Wrath: Please, Can We Be More Aware and Less Angry?

Two Thursdays ago, President Obama announced a new policy: imposing a “Fiscal Crisis Responsibility Fee” on Wall Street.  The title is both shifty and judgmental, with the judgments based more on emotion than on fact.  The fee is actually a tax. And it’s being levied on only a subset of those responsible for our recession: the ones it’s so easy to hate.

Obama says that his “Responsibility Fee” is designed in part to help the Treasury recoup its losses on its “Troubled Asset Relieve Program” (TARP), the dramatic effort started by Bush 43 and continued by Obama to unfreeze credit during our recession. The program began with loans, not gifts, to the ...

Taking Stock: Grading Obama’s Domestic Economic Policies His First Year in Office

Barack Obama became America’s 44th President in troubled economic times. On the home front, his “conservative” predecessor had authorized spending that created a deficit of $l.3 trillion. Real-estate markets, stock markets, and financial markets collapsed. Advanced economies run on credit, and credit seized up. The United States entered a recession and feared it would be a deep and long one.

Economic doldrums, of course, helped make it possible for a newcomer to become President against the odds and the insiders. Now they make it harder for him to govern, even though they also contributed to creating strong Democrat majorities in both House and Senate. Immediate concerns over rising unemployment ...

Rolling the Dice with Congressman Barney Frank

Barney Frank, D-MA, takes  gamblers’  interests to heart.  As Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee (HFSC), he plans to replace the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA), a regulation made in the “midnight hours” of the previous Administration, with better legislation of his own.  The UIGEA as written, he says, “would curtail the freedom of Americans to use the internet as they choose.” If only Congressman Frank’s interest in gambling stopped here.  If only Congressman Frank merely dabbled in the occasional lottery ticket.  Hold on for your life, because Chairman Frank is doubling down on some of the disastrous policies that brought on the financial crisis and got the world ...

Is Goldman Sachs the New Halliburton? Revolving Doors and Conflicts of Interest

Do conflicts of interest make  Goldman Sachs the new Halliburton?  No.  It may be even worse.

Halliburton/KBR had a revolving door for Dick Cheney that served both of them well.  Their problem is that Cheney as Vice-President was very visible, very angry, and very polarizing.  He was also the only one in the door. Goldman Sachs also has a revolving door.  It’s harder to personalize, because there are so many people using it.  None of them has quite the visibility of Mr. Cheney, nor do they speak out so publicly and with such righteous indignation.  They’re much too shrewd for that.  Goldman’s door cycles brilliant and obsessively hard-working people between the company ...