Wow! Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have asked the Federal Reserve to become bank holding companies, and the Fed–which just so happens to regulate bank holding companies–has said ‘come on down’. We’ll be learning over the next few weeks what exactly this means, but I have a few off-the-top-of-the-head thoughts. 1) Goldman and Morgan are [...]
It’s going to be an interesting week. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson has asked Congress for a $700 billion blank check to buy junky mortgage securities. This was in keeping with the “trust me” approach that Paulson first tried out with Congress in July in the case of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac–Give me the leeway [...]
