Bailing Out Promises

By Emily Eisenlohr | October 18, 2012

“No more bailouts!” That’s the latest campaign promise from both presidential candidates. Congressmen have claimed that regularly, too. But bailouts of the biggest banks continue. What they are bailing out may surprise you. In Congressional hearings the biggest banks want us to believe they are like the little savings and loan portrayed in the movie It’s a…

Banks? Heck, No! They’re Great Big Hedge Funds!!!

By Emily Eisenlohr | September 22, 2012

Paul Volcker knows something you don’t know and that Congressmen don’t want to know. The biggest banks have become massive collectors of hedge funds and other alternative private investment vehicles, hidden behind a facade of traditional banking. To understand this is to understand a major reason why Paul Volcker proposed the Volcker Rule. The largest banks are no longer about traditional…

The Morgan Stanley Puzzle

By Emily Eisenlohr | June 15, 2012

Grab your jackhammers. Let’s do some drilling. The Federal Reserve’s behavior towards Morgan Stanley is puzzling. How much of the puzzle is Morgan Stanley’s own doing, and how much is the Fed’s?

Exchange Risk: MF Global, Morgan Stanley and Basel IV

By Emily Eisenlohr | June 15, 2012

It’s their money or the taxpayers’. A global battle. Since the biggest banks remain Too Big To Fail, the only tool protecting taxpayers from bailout duty is bank capital.  Jamie Dimon believes this, too, and he runs the largest bank.

They Can Do the Math, and You Can’t

By Emily Eisenlohr | May 30, 2012

Battles rage between shareholder money and taxpayer money in the arena of Too Big To Fail bank capital ratios. The biggest banks make capital dodging an artform. Big bank credit rating downgrades are likely to continue and will make demands on bank capital. Taxpayers should be concerned about the adequacy of capital, as captured in…

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