February 2009

First of a series on the Crackdown on Wall Street With the economy in a national nervous breakdown, with global losses mounting into the trillions of dollars, a top Wall Street executive in an interview echoes the Street's water cooler talk when he asks: "Where are the smartest guys in the room being hauled off in handcuffs?" Specifically, executives say the markets have only seen ... read more

Second in the Crackdown on Wall Street Series "What's taking so long?" That's the common refrain you hear among even the rank and file on Wall Street, home to the subprime bond factories. Even lower level workers want to know when miscreant Wall Street executives will get arrested, the officials who went berserk cranking out fraudulent, dangerous securities and who, in the process have ... read more

Third in the Crackdown on Wall Street series What exactly went on behind the scenes in Wall Street's subprime bond factory? A behind the scenes, inside look at three asset-backed bond deals on Wall Street, deals that eventually imploded, shows exactly the danger investors were put in. Law enforcement officials now say arrests on Wall Street will be made not just of those who hawked ... read more

The US Treasury and the Federal Reserve have just taken out the bazookas in their "full arsenal approach" to fixing the credit crisis. What's clearly getting blown out the backdoor are taxpayers' wallets and common sense. The Treasury and the Fed have now expanded the Fed's Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF) to "support the purchase of loans by providing the financing to ... read more

In covering the hearing of the nine bank chief executives on Capitol Hill, it didn't take long for me to see that Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf was having a hard time of it, valiant effort though he did make to defend his bank's lending practices. Because to look inside Wells Fargo, you will find the worst of the mortgage lenders housed in this bank, Wachovia, which Wells Fargo bought last fall ... read more