I wonder what the consequences of this will be:
The U.S. credit card industry may pull back well over $2 trillion of lines over the next 18 months due to risk aversion and regulatory changes, leading to sharp declines in consumer spending, prominent banking analyst Meredith Whitney said.
The credit card is the second key source of [...]

What continues to bother me about the financial crisis is that so many people saw the warning signs and yet so many others refused to pay attention to the risks.
A new AP report reveals the extent to which the Bush administration ignored the danger. Here’s a list of what the administration could have done [...]

Looks like the Big 3 will get one last shot at it, and this time they better have a more cohesive plan.
From WSJ:
The House Financial Services Committee scheduled a hearing for Dec. 5 at 9:30 a.m. ET to review plans by the Big Three car makers to stabilize their beleaguered companies. The Senate Banking Committee [...]

If you’re economist, you know her to be a pragmatic, centrist expert on Great Depression era economic policies. And if you’re an American, well, hearing about her background should make you confident that she’s the right person to help pull us out of this downturn.
Politico gets to know the new Council of Economic Advisers Chair…
Christina [...]

The ailing Citigroup is being fairly targeted for their spendthrift ways.
From NY Times:
In 2006, Citigroup signed a 20-year, $400 million contract to name the Mets’ new stadium in Queens Citi Field. As recently as last week, the troubled financial-services conglomerate said it had no intention of backing out of the deal for the new stadium [...]

The third in as many days.
By the way, do people see Obama as President now given how many press conferences he’s doing and how ineffectual Bush has been?

Again color me impressed. The guy is thorough, but not long winded and he actually listens to questions and answers them like a normal human being.
Definitely not [...]

William Greider of The Nation wonders if Barack Obama’s recent appointments indicate he won’t be the progressive savior many of the left hoped he’d be.
Obama’s choices have begun to define him. His victory, it appears, was a triumph for the cautious center-right politics that has described the Democratic party for several decades. Those of us [...]

As a result of mushy thinking, we are now given to understand the “free market” problem that was created by too much government spending, too much government debt, too much government sponsored credit via easy monetary policy, and a market wildly distorted by government intervention to meet social goals (along with a large helping of corporate criminal fraud that slipped through the existing government regulatory framework) can only be solved by increasing government spending, increasing government debt, have an easy monetary policy and create more market distortions with more government intervention to meet similar social goals.

The next move of the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve will be an attempt to boost consumer credit by pumping $25 billion to $100 billion into a new program to be announced later today. The money will come from the Troubled Asset Relief Program.
We’ll have to wait for the details before judging this newest program, [...]

Just in case you haven’t seen it…

The pace at which Obama is moving in this transition (the earliest and quickest in history) makes me confident his team will be able to move just as swiftly when he actually has the power of the POTUS.
What’s more, it genuinely feels like he’ll fulfill the promise of his [...]

Mixed in with that economic announcement earlier today was news of budget cuts to make sure that the Americans’ know the government is tightening their belts first and leading by example.
From Politico:
“[T]o make the investments we need, we’ll have to scour our federal budget, line-by-line, and make meaningful cuts and sacrifices as well – something [...]

He advocates buying gold, plus he has some extremely dire predictions for the economy over the next few years…

One thing I’m wondering after watching this clip…is Schiff actually advocating a complete collapse of our financial system so the market essentially has to reboot from scratch?
Listen, I respect the fact that the guy called the [...]

Lots to read, so here’s the whole thing…
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Good morning.
The news this past week, including this morning’s news about Citigroup, has made it even more clear that we are facing an economic crisis of historic proportions. Our financial markets are under stress. New home purchases in October were the lowest in half a century. Recently, more [...]

Well, this certainly wasn’t expected, but what I’ve been hearing from most economists lately is that what the markets need right is reassurance that things won’t spiral out of control…and the only thing to do that is a big pot of money.
From Bloomberg:
Nov. 24 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. government is prepared to lend more than [...]

Last night, officials from the Federal Reserve, Treasury Department and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp agreed to bailout financial giant Citigroup by putting an extra $20 billion into the company and by providing up to $306 billion of government backing against large losses on risky mortgages.
These funds will come from the $700 billion in bailout [...]

And it’s all infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure. What we’re seeing is indeed the New New Deal and if it worked once, it’ll work again.
The weekly “radio” address…

Obviously I’m in favor of this, especially with the layoffs that will come from the Big 3 restructuring their business models, be it via a prepackaged Chapter 11 or government [...]

Was it the news that the current president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank would be Obama’s new money man that saw the market close up by almost 7% or was it just a fluke?
WSJ has the details…
The Federal Bureau of Investigation began calling Geithner confidants this week, starting a vetting process of getting [...]

Word has leaked that Barack Obama has selected New York Federal Reserve President Timothy Geithner for Treasury Secretary. Wall Street liked the news. The Dow rose nearly 500 points after news broke of Geithner’s forthcoming appointment.
Geithner seems in line with many of Obama’s other selections: experienced, intelligent and respected by colleagues. Geithner served in the [...]

Hi, this is Danielle Ivory from ANP. My colleague, Lagan Sebert, and I have recently been covering the economic crisis and found ourselves thoroughly intrigued by the bank mergers happening all over the country. We looked into it, connected the dots, and this is what we discovered..
With newfound bailout money in their wallets, [...]