News Topic: Financial Institutions

I had the privilege today of hearing Federal Reserve Board Governor Sarah Bloom Raskin deliver the keynote address to the Section on Financial Institutions at the American Association of Law Schools Annual Meeting.  Governor Bloom Raskin's topic: ... Read full article

There's been a lot of media coverage of the recent ruling of the NY Supreme Court (that's the trial court, not the final Court of Appeals) in MBIA v. Countrywide, a suit by the monoline bond insurer against Countrywide for fraud, negligent ... Read full article

Bill Black has an interesting new take on the role of Fannie and Freddie in the housing bubble . He sees their investment in non-prime mortgages as being driven by executive compensation, rather than a fight for market share against investment bank ... Read full article

Michael Olenick , Gretchen Morgenson , and Yves Smith have all written pretty damning things about the ... Read full article

The Administration seems to have cut a deal to extend the payroll tax cut, which is a smart economic move in terms of trying to support demand. But it's being paid for by an increase in the "G-fee" (guarantee fee) charged by FHA and Fannie ... Read full article

The last 24 hours have witnessed some remarkable historical revisionism on financial regulation coming out of the GOP. First, we had one of the most bizarre and simply untrue attack ads I've ever seen, courtesy of Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS ... Read full article

What would you do if you were running an insolvent company? The smart thing is to bet big:  go with a high-risk/high-return strategy.  If the gamble pays off, you're solvent, and if not, well, you're already insolvent.  You're playing with ... Read full article

The United States has no housing policy. And there's none on the horizon either. That's a scary thing, given the centrality of housing to domestic economic woes.   Once upon a time, the US had a housing policy. It was focused on increasing ... Read full article

The New York Times came out with a strong editorial urging state AGs and the Administration not to rush into the proposed multi-state settlement deal. I think it's worthwhile reviewing what we know about the deal and the arguments for and against it. ... Read full article

In early October of 2011, Bank of America announced that it would begin charging its customers an additional $5 users fee for using its debit cards. In my financial literacy class the weekend after the announcement, some students were resigned to it, some ... Read full article

I want to draw about two trillion underlines under Alphaville's point  that we’d also like to know about concentration. That is, are there just a few counterparties out there that are big net sellers of Italy CDS or are there many? Which CDS have the ... Read full article

The NY Times had some details today about the multi-state attorney general mortgage servicing settlement in the works. It looks every bit as awful as one might have feared. Here's the criticial take-away:  this is bupkis. It gives meaningless relief ... Read full article

Over on Dealbook , I look at a fight between Lehman and Deutsche Bank regarding classification of a claim Deutsche Bank bought from Lehman's German estate, and then partially sold to some hedge funds. The stakes are only four or five cents on the ... Read full article

Over at Dealbook , I take a look at the fight among tranche members in the case of a CDO that is in chapter 11 in New Jersey. Yes, that's not suppose to happen . . . which is what makes it so interesting. ... Read full article

The SDNY requires mutually too, according to  Judge Peck . ... Read full article

Over at Dealbook , I look at the very different treatment awaiting unsecured creditors of Countrywide, depending on whether they are bondholders or tort litigants. ... Read full article

Over at ... Read full article

Bully for you, Bank of America.  Bank of America's starting charging monthly fees for debit card usage to some customers. This is being taken as an "I told you so" by opponents of the Durbin Amendment, who argued that it would only result ... Read full article