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January 4, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
Radio & web address by President-elect Barack Obama, 3 January 2009
As the holiday season comes to end, we are thankful for family and friends and all the blessings that make life worth living. But as we mark the beginning of a new year, we also know that America faces great and growing challenges—challenges that threaten [...]
December 22, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
In the spring of 2008, it was becoming apparent that a deep-seated financial crisis was threatening to overwhelm credit markets in the US. The major Wall Street investment bank, Bear Stearns was the first towering financial entity to have its fate decided by a government-backed transaction designed to prevent a crisis in confidence from spreading. But questionable financial dealings, which had become standard and were now underpinning important investments held by the majority of major Wall Street firms, were coming to light and inspiring a wildfire spread of uncertain credit valuations.
December 11, 2008 :: Webb Tisch :: No Comment Yet
The United States House of Representatives has passed a bill to deliver bridge loans to the “big 3″ US automakers, in order to stave off bankruptcy and the potential loss of millions of jobs related to the industry. Stiff opposition to “sending good money after bad” had stalled the rescue loans, but November’s staggering job losses of 533,000 changed the mood in Washington, raising fears of a trigger event that could push the economy into depression.
December 10, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
It may be that “a few bad apples” got the ball rolling on what has turned into a massive international financial disaster. Or, it may be that a few bad apples got their names in lights, while the entire system conspired unwittingly in a spectacular collapse. Either way, the best expression of the problem might be to say that markets have stopped working, in part, because they have been comprehensively modified to stop working like markets. An open banking transparency network would reduce the motivation for wrongdoing and privilege more reliable sources of information, creating confidence and motivating sound market dynamics.
November 26, 2008 :: staff :: One Comment
Today, I’m pleased to announce the formation of a new institution to help our economic team accomplish these goals: the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board. This Board is modeled on the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board created by President Eisenhower to provide rigorous analysis and vigorous oversight of our intelligence community by individuals outside of government — individuals who would be candid and unsparing in their assessment. This new board will perform a similar function for my Administration as we formulate our economic policy.
November 26, 2008 :: Denver Lessing :: No Comment Yet
President-elect Barack Obama, in his third press conference in as many days, has announced a new entity, the independent Economic Recovery Advisory Board (ERAB), to be headed by former Fed chairman Paul Volcker. ERAB will include individuals from government, private business, organized labor and academia, pooling the knowledge and analysis of individuals with a wealth of experience and who are not bound by being employees of the president, in order to get the best advice for weathering the storm.
November 24, 2008 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
President-elect Barack Obama has officially named a team of top economic officials and advisors which has been well-received by political leaders, market analysts and the press. Timothy Geithner, president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, will serve as Secretary of the Treasury, while former Treasury secretary and onetime Harvard president Lawrence Summers will serve as chief of the National Economic Council.
November 20, 2008 :: Denver Lessing :: One Comment
Cable news yesterday and today’s newspapers are full of references to the embarrassment Detroit’s “big three” automakers’ chief executives occasioned by flying to DC in 3 separate private jets to ask for a $25 billion “bailout” bridge loan. Pleading poverty while showing off the extravagance of one’s expenditures is poor form, no matter what the season, but it clearly displays a lack of awareness of how much the economic culture of the nation has changed.
November 16, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: 2 Comments
A “wave election”, with public sentiment clearly moving in a new direction, calling for principled governance, with a new focus on progressive aims… economic crisis, having built up over a decade, hidden in the esoteric workings of financial instruments reliant on advanced physics for mathematical proof of viability, worsened by unprincipled exaggerations and manipulations… the potential for a major swing in global opinions about the meaning of political systems… the climate is ripe for change, and we now face the problem of conceptualizing change, in order to see and understand its implementation.
November 6, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: 2 Comments
Sen. Barack Obama, as president-elect, now faces the daunting task of staging a transition from campaign to governing, and from the Bush years to the Obama years, in what must be the most artful and adroit performance of the task seen in decades. Facing two wars, looming multifaceted economic crisis, and the need to overhaul national energy policy and fight environmental degradation on an unprecedented scale, Obama is faced not just with forming a cabinet and White House team, but formulating a strategy for enacting the change he has promised in a time of historic difficulty.
October 24, 2008 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
Former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan today told the House committee on Oversight and Government Reform, investigating the collapse of the American credit markets, that he experienced “shocked disbelief” in the face of the financial system’s near unraveling, and admitted, under questioning from Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), that he now recognizes there were flaws in the ideology which informed his policy decisions. Waxman pressed Greenspan to admit that excessive deregulation had been the principle factor in bringing about the financial crisis.
October 14, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA/Dow) today had its single biggest day of gains in history, climbing 936 points. It could be a good sign, that on Friday the market “established a bottom”, but it’s important to remember: the nature of volatility is not that it is ripe for gain or ripe for loss, but that it is volatility, and one’s will and judgment are not always as relevant as one would like.
October 10, 2008 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
The United States is gripped by a massive financial crisis that has frozen credit markets, killed major banks, and pushed millions of families toward the dark day of home foreclosure. The stock market is suffering unbelievable declines, and people are asking, why don’t they stop selling? Can’t there be a concerted effort to restore confidence? One major part of the problem is employment and the middle class: the average household has actually seen their income decline by $2,000 since 2001.
October 10, 2008 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
With talk of the entire nation of Iceland sliding into bankruptcy, CitiGroup threatening to file a multi-billion-dollar suit against Wells Fargo for upending its buyout of Wachovia, and an unprecedented coordinated “global” interest-rate cut failing to prevent a near 700-pt. selloff yesterday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has again dropped nearly 700 points in just 7 minutes of trading. At 7,900 points, the rate of decline is edging ever-closer to the 10% “circuit-breaker” threshold that would halt trading.
October 9, 2008 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
The sheriff of Cook County, Illinois, which includes the city of Chicago, has suspended law-enforcement support for evictions, expressing outrage at mortgage lenders, and saying too many innocent renters are being forced onto the street with literally zero notice. Sheriff Thomas Dart says all foreclosure-related evictions will be postponed indefinitely, because law-enforcement has “no idea who’s in the home” when they show up to force residents to leave. He says there are too many “unjust” circumstances in which innocent people, whom nobody has informed of the building’s foreclosure, are targetted by evictions.
October 9, 2008 :: staff :: One Comment
Dear Chairman Bernanke and Secretary Paulson: There is grave concern in low-income communities about a potential coming wave of foreclosures. Because regulators are partly responsible for creating the environment that is leading to rising rates of home foreclosure in the subprime mortgage market, I urge you immediately to convene a homeownership preservation summit with leading mortgage lenders, investors, loan servicing organizations, consumer advocates, federal regulators and housing-related agencies to assess options for private sector responses to the challenge.
September 24, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Una ola de misticismo financiero entró en los mercados financieros hace unas décadas, y poco a poco ha ido provocando crisis y revueltos, pero sólo después de haberse contagiado a los políticos de Washington, Londres y Pekín, ha llegado a ser una catástrofe económico in potentia. Matemáticamente, hay que negociar con lo que hay, con recursos finitos, y planificar sistemas de contabilidad que tomen en cuenta que riesgo no es dinero ganado, sino dinero por ganar si todo sale bien. Parece una lógica más que evidente, pero para los místicos de la contabilidad no-finita, se ha convertido en moda anticuada y normativa molesta.
September 17, 2008 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
One of the “pillars of Wall Street”, 158-year-old Lehman Brothers investment bank, has entered bankruptcy proceedings, in order to prevent creditors from seizing its assets. The move came after Barclays and Bank of America withdrew offers to buy out the stumbling giant, and the US government refused to intervene to protect the firm. Merrill Lynch, known for “bringing Wall Street to Main Street”, was sold to Bank of America for less than half of what it was worth at the beginning of 2007. Amid concern that the massive insurance firm AIG could be the next to fall, the Federal Reserve to issue an $85 billion loan, taking an 80% stake.
August 25, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
As the US economy goes through one major shock after another —in jobs, stocks, housing, banking, general inflation, food prices and energy—, with economists saying this is the worst economic trauma since the Great Depression and the “dustbowl” of the 1930s, we are still hearing debate about whether we are in recession and whether or not consumer confidence is dropping off for material or psychological reasons. It just might be that the perspective of the average consumer is determined by actual spending ability.
July 21, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
The United States is firmly in the thrall of a banking meltdown, in which the normal structures, the means of measuring performance, and the meaning of debt-holdings, are all out of balance. More than one Wall Street firm or investment bank has written of tens of billions of dollars in uncollectable debt. Financier George Soros has published a book on the Great Credit Crisis. Economic growth figures have been worrying, with some seeing federal figures as “nudged” upward to avoid playing into a downward spiral of apprehension.
July 11, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Amid plummeting stock values and fears of an expanding threat of mass numbers of mortgage foreclosures —estimates range from 3 to 6 million homes in foreclosure within one year—, observers have suggested failure of one of the two major government-backed lenders could push the American economy into “depression”. The Treasury Department is reported to be considering a takeover of one or both of the mortgage-backing giants, which between them control $5 trillion in debt.
March 12, 2008 :: admin :: No Comment Yet
12 March :: Democrats propose permitting telecom firms to defend themselves in ex parte communications with judges, away from view of plaintiffs, where evidence includes classified national security information; move is designed to allow court cases to move forward, permit phone companies right to mount defense, but with no offer of retroactive immunity for any [...]
December 5, 2007 :: admin :: No Comment Yet
5 December :: US Supreme Court hearing case of prisoners held at Guantánamo Bay naval base, without charge or due process, who now argue 2006 military tribunals legislation violates the US Constitution because it strips defendants of habeas corpus rights; LA Times reports “the detainees do not have lawyers and have no right to challenge [...]
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