Tag: banks

Dramatic, yes, but missing the point

http://www.hbo.com/bin/hboPlayerV2.swf?vid=1175400

I just watched HBO’s Too Big to Fail and I have to say that, dramatically, it lives up to the hype. The story moves along at a brisk pace and the star-studded cast turns in a collection of powerful performances.

And yet, Too Big to Fail fails in the same way that historical recreations often fail: It simplifies the 2008 financial disaster, turns a massive systemic derailment into a story of individuals. Hank Paulson and Timothy Geithner and Ben Bernanke and the leaders of the big banks and investment houses — these are the players, the decision-makers and the men (almost exclusively) who nearly drove the nation off a cliff and then, at the last minute, righted it.

This makes for great cinema and storytelling, but it is lousy history. The 2008 financial crisis had far deeper roots than the film implies. They go far deeper than just the Clinton-era financial reforms that turned the Street into a casino, deeper than the deregulatory mania of the Carter and Reagan years. The problem is capitalism itself, which is prone to boom-and-bust cycles and demands profits at all costs.

Too Big to Fail is, in the end, insider baseball, the story of how Washington insiders averted a crisis of their own making.

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Memo to banks from New York AG: No impunity

If the feds won’t dig into banking practices, then the states will have to — or, at least, New York will.

The New York attorney general has requested information and documents in recent weeks from three major Wall Street banks about their mortgage securities operations during the credit boom, indicating the existence of a new investigation into practices that contributed to billions in mortgage losses.

Officials in Eric T. Schneiderman’s, office have also requested meetings with representatives from Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, according to people briefed on the matter who were not authorized to speak publicly. The inquiry appears to be quite broad, with the attorney general’s requests for information covering many aspects of the banks’ loan pooling operations. They bundled thousands of home loans into securities that were then sold to investors such as pension funds, mutual funds and insurance companies.

  • Send me an e-mail.
  • Read poetry at The Subterranean.
  • Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
  • Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.
Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Banks remain stingy

The problem with the bank bailout can be summed up by this article: The banks got help, then kept the cash. They continue to get help, in the form of low interest rates, and they continue to hold on to the money rather than lend it out. No wonder the banks are high on everyone’s s-list.

  • Send me an e-mail.
  • Read poetry at The Subterranean.
  • Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. it can be ordered here.
  • Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.
Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.