Steal a little and they throw you in jail, Steal a lot and they make you king …
On CNBC just now, Larry Kudlow just predicting the coming historic rally in bank and financial stocks now that the “jack boot” of regulatory oversight was being lifted.
Remember, one of the big reasons to give those retention bonuses to the executives at AIG Financial Products division was to keep them and their brain power and experience at the company. But it turns out that a bunch of them who just got the retention bonuses had already left the company.
I recently spoke with Liaquat Ahamed, an investment manager and author of Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World, about three key central bank figures during the Great Depression. In our interview, he compares the current regulatory environment to the one in place in the 1920s-30s and reveals the things about the current downturn that keep him up at night:
If AIG were Moby Dick, would that make Eliot Spitzer … Ahab?
In our slideshow of shame, behold the senators and representatives who voted against the omnibus spending bill because it contained too many earmarks, but who made sure they tucked their own earmarks into the bill.
Citigroup chief economist Lewis Alexander to take job (sub.req) as counselor to Tim Geithner.