Timothy Geithner may take the second half of the summer off.
Bloomberg is reporting that the Treasury Secretary is considering leaving his post after the debt ceiling debate is resolved. The deadline for that is August 2nd. After that, the government can’t pay its bills. That puts Geithner out the door sometime in the next few weeks. …
The Federal Reserve decided to cut the amount banks could charge on debit card transactions in half. The Fed, which was required under the financial reform bill Dodd-Frank to set a limit for what banks could charge retailers to process debit card transactions, capped the so-called swipe fees at $0.21 to $0.24 – depending on the size of …
Monetary utopia will have to wait.
In mid-June, Bitcoin, a virtual currency many lauded as a model for the future of money, plunged in value after a hacker nearly stole $9 million of the digital dollars. The exchange rate had reached $30 per Bitcoin, up from $5 as recently as April. After the hack, the value dove to penny, but has …
Eight months ago, when approached by investors to repay a portion of their losses in mortgage bonds, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan said no way. He said that his firm had followed the rules and that he was going to fight this …
Eight months ago, when approached by investors to repay a portion of their losses in mortgage bonds, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan said no way. He said that his firm had followed the rules and that he was going to fight this one to the end. The outcome of that “fight” may indicate that the big banks are far from paying their tab …
New Jersey, one of the richest states in the nation, is nearly broke.
Starting next week the Garden State could be unable to pay its bills unless it secures a short-term loan of $2.25 billion, which it is reportedly close to doing with JPMorgan Chase. New Jersey’s fiscal year starts July 1st. Usually it has a fair amount of money left …
They’re back.
In the past few months, it appears, shadow banks (financial firms that make loans but aren’t actual banks) seem to be making a comeback. In case you’ve forgotten about these things already, shadow banks are like …
They’re back.
In the past few months, it appears, shadow banks, financial firms that make loans but aren’t actual banks, seem to be making a come back. In case you have forgotten about these things already, shadow banks are financial firms, like hedge funds or money market funds or even insurance companies, that aren’t real banks – no …
The power of Google to determine what information we see, and when, is enormous. Apparently, the U.S. government is worried Google has abused that power.
The Federal Trade Commission is on the verge of opening a formal civil investigation to see if Google has stifled competition on the Web. The FTC has been unofficially watching …
A new study by a group of International Monetary Fund economists and an economist from the San Francisco Federal Reserve suggests that the unemployment rate is not coming down anytime soon, at least not to where it was before the recession.
The study, which is called New Evidence on Cyclical and Structural Sources of Unemployment, has …
The Federal Reserve’s $600 billion bond buying program ends at the end of this month. The program, which was the second round of quantitative easing for the central bank and has become known as QE2, has been controversial. So you are likely to read a lot of commentary over the next week or two about what it did and what it didn’t do, and …
It appears JP Morgan Chase is a vampire squid as well.
JPMorgan will pay a $153 million fine to settle Securities and Exchange Commission charges that it misled investors in a mortgage bond deal just as the housing market was about to crack. The SEC alleges that JPMorgan sold a type of risky mortgage deal called a collateralized debt …
