Regulate

7 Comments

    • Saving the Economy with IRA Funds [view article]
      NO, NO, NO
      IRA accounts should be protected from high risk and non-secured investments and scams. This guy suggests taking retirement funds prudently earned to pay for unscupulous lending and selling practices by the banks and down stream markets. Retirement funds need better protections from these types of ideas, particularly self-directed IRA's which are a con man's dream come true.       May 12 11:05 AM
    • The Credit Bubble: Deregulation Gone Wild [view article]
      This is truly a historical and academic accounting that sheds light on the farcical nature of the US financial system. The people responsible for such devestating damage will not suffer nearly as much as those least responsible, even to future generations. It seems that Wall Street has devolved to a lower animal state where even mothers eat their young. Apr 06 03:32 PM
    • Spitzer: Self-Destruction [view article]
      Truly a stupid decision that will end the guys promising career. I highly doubt however, that this would ever have come to light had Spitzer not been involved in investing crimes committed in the markets. He started his career bringing down the mob and the syndicates have moved into the financial and market sectors. It appears that they now own the entire country. Mar 11 11:07 AM
    • A 10-Year Retrospective of Hedge Fund Risks and Returns [view article]
      Thank you so much for this expose which has been way overdue. The lack of regulation and transparency in the hedge fund industry is obviously weakening the economy and leaving investors exposed to exploitation and fraud. Mar 09 11:56 AM
    • Freefall Fed Policies? [view article]
      The best advise, among many, listed is the cap on interest rates. The usury laws should not have been dismantled in the first place. That may have been the beginning of various abuses of the financial markets that have gotten us into the present mess. Mar 09 11:33 AM
    • What Hedge Funds and Porno Have in Common [view article]
      Would this be similar to the fraudent Fahey fund which had a web site for unsuspecting investors to transfer their IRA funds to this scam? As long as hedge funds are unregulanted, have little to no transparency, and have no protections for investors, then they should not be allowed to advertise to ordinary investors. There are already enough scams with hedge funds. Let's not make it easier. Mar 03 12:56 PM
    • Housing Bailout: Crony Capitalism Comes to America? [view article]
      fair use only
      Subprime Safeguards We Needed
      Washington Post
      By Nicholas Bagley
      Friday, January 25, 2008
      As the federal government scurries to prevent the subprime mortgage crisis from sending the economy into a deep recession, people are asking why it waited so long to intervene. But, in fact, a few years ago an obscure federal agency torpedoed legislation from a handful of states that would have made institutional investors far more chary of buying mortgages that were likely to fail. If the legislation had been permitted to take effect, the crisis we now face would probably look a lot less grim.....To combat this surge in predatory lending, some state legislatures decided to stanch the flow of easy credit to subprime lenders. In 2002, Georgia became the first state to tell players in the secondary mortgage market that they might be on the hook if they purchased loans deemed "predatory" under state law. Before, downstream owners of mortgage-backed securities might see the value of their investments drop, but that was generally the worst that could happen. Under the Georgia Fair Lending Act, however, players in the secondary mortgage market could face serious liability if they so much as touched a predatory loan....Enter the feds. Some of the biggest players in the secondary mortgage market are national banks, and the states' efforts to curb predatory lending clashed with banks' fervent desire to keep the market rolling. So the banks turned to the Treasury Department's Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. The primary regulatory responsibility of the OCC is ensuring the safety and soundness of the national bank system, but almost its entire budget comes from fees it imposes on banks, which have the option of incorporating under state law. Put another way, the agency's funding depends on keeping the banks happy. Little surprise, then, that the OCC acted when the national banks asked it to preempt subprime-mortgage laws such as Georgia's, arguing that they conflicted with federal banking law...Despite the banks' thin legal arguments, the OCC issued regulations in early 2004 nullifying the state laws as they applied to national banks. The agency reasoned in part that the states just got it wrong. As the then-comptroller explained in a 2003 speech: "We know that it's possible to deal effectively with predatory lending without putting impediments in the way of those who provide access to legitimate subprime credit."

      With the state laws nullified, national banks and their subsidiaries were free to engage in the practices the states were hoping to stamp out. (Indeed, Georgia scuttled its law because it didn't want to give national banks a competitive advantage over its state institutions.) Facing pressure from subprime lenders and Wall Street, and left without a real chance of holding investors responsible for purchasing ill-advised loans, state legislatures gave up on trying to meaningfully expose downstream buyers to liability for facilitating predatory lending...As federal officials move to clean up the subprime mess, it's worth remembering that they helped to create it.





      Feb 26 11:25 AM
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