Last week Shaun Donovan, who runs the Department of Housing and Urban Development, said that it might make sense to modify the mortgage interest tax deduction. Sacrilege! Giving people a tax break for buying a house is one of the great middle class subsidies. Donovan knew he was on shaky ground when he said it, [...]
The U.S. economy continues to improve, yet it is so tentative that we look for reassurances in all the tea leaves. Thursday brought us the weekly jobless report; Friday it will rain tea leaves when we get retail sales, industrial production, consumer sentiment and business inventories. Not much in any of this will make or [...]
Andrew Cuomo really hasn’t had a good financial crisis. This is when prosecutors are supposed to shine. Just ask Spitzer. Cuomo came out swinging at the beginning of the financial crisis against Merrill and Bank of America on bonuses. He did a good job of calling Bank of America chief Ken Lewis last year on [...]
The crisis in Europe was sparked by the widespread belief among investors that Greece’s financial woes were just the tip of a much bigger debt iceberg in the Eurozone. The fear has been that other member nations – Portugal, Ireland, Italy and Spain, which, along with Greece, are called the PIIGS – were also buried [...]
This USA Today article, which talks about the average personal tax rate being at a 60-year low, is getting a lot of attention. The conclusion is pretty fascinating: Americans paid their lowest level of taxes last year since Harry Truman’s presidency, a USA TODAY analysis of federal data found. Federal, state and local taxes — including income, property, [...]
Eh tu, Morgan Stanley? The Wall Street Journal is reporting this morning that the Securities and Exchange Commission is looking into whether Morgan Stanley, too, broke securities laws when it structured mortgage securities and then made money by betting against them. The SEC already has brought a similar case against Goldman. But this really shouldn’t [...]
Ok. So here’s what we do know. It is very unlikely that a “fat finger”–Wall Street lingo for a trader keying in the wrong trade, say selling billions of shares instead of millions–caused the market crash. But what did? Mary Shapiro, the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, told a Congressional panel today that [...]
Yesterday, Fannie Mae said that it would need another $8.4 billion to cover losses on the home loans it backs, and today the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees both Fannie and sibling Freddie Mac, said that the ultimate taxpayer tab of supporting the two housing giants is still unclear. That’s the [...]
—WSJ has perhaps the definitive story on what caused the market crash last Thursday. So who is to blame? Nassim Taleb, Mr. Black Swan himself. Felix Salmon, Reuters’ uber blogger, thinks pinning the drop on Taleb is poppycock. It’s a disturbing revelation and more than anything else reason why we need new rules to [...]
