Top Employees Flee Pay-Limited Firms
Remember that plan by Obama's pay czar to radically limit executive pay at bailed out banks? And how some of us were predicting that they'd just go to companies whose pay was not limited? Well, it didn't take long. Even before the Obama administration formally tightened executive compensation at bailed-out companies, the prospect of pay cuts had led some top employees ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on October 23, 2009 08:50
Obama Pay Czar Slashes Compensation for Bailed Out Firms
The top earners at the top firms bailed out by the U.S. government during the financial crisis will have their pay and bonuses drastically cut. Deborah Soloman and Dan Fitzpatrick for WSJ: The U.S. pay czar will cut in half the average compensation for 175 employees at firms receiving large sums of government aid, with the vast majority of ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on October 22, 2009 09:36
GM Bankruptcy Over, GM Lite Emerges
Surprisingly few bloggers of the bloggers I read are writing about GM's emergence from bankruptcy in a mere 40 days through a rather unorthodox process. The background: AP: General Motors completed an unusually quick exit from bankruptcy protection on Friday with ambitions of making money and building cars people are eager to buy. Once the world's largest and most powerful automaker, new ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 10, 2009 16:19
Some More Numbers on the Geithner Plan
Were you wondering if yesterday's big rally was related to the Geithner plan? Well, it probably was. The Treasury helpfully provides an example, which I reproduce here: Step 1: If a bank has a pool of residential mortgages with $100 face value that it is seeking to divest, the bank would approach the FDIC. Step 2: The FDIC would determine, according to ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on March 24, 2009 16:53
Geithner Plan: TARP 2.0?
Tim Geithner takes to the pages of WSJ to flesh out his Plan for Bad Bank Assets. Our new Public-Private Investment Program will set up funds to provide a market for the legacy loans and securities that currently burden the financial system. The Public-Private Investment Program will purchase real-estate related loans from banks and securities from the broader markets. Banks will have ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on March 23, 2009 06:23
Renogiating Mortages
Eric Posner has a Slate piece offering a novel plan for "renegotiat[ing] all those bad loans at no cost to the taxpayer." The solution to this problem is for the government to force renegotiations to occur. A simple plan could do this. The plan would give all homeowners who live in a ZIP code where house prices have dropped more than ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on March 3, 2009 07:54
GM, Chrysler Seek Billions for Dumb Business Plan
Having already wasted billions of our tax dollars, GM and Chrysler are back. But don't worry, they've got a plan: General Motors and Chrysler, two flagships of traditional American manufacturing, reported yesterday that the decline of the U.S. economy has outpaced their bleakest expectations of just two months ago, forcing them to significantly boost their request for billions of dollars ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on February 18, 2009 08:09
Bush to Bail Out Big 3
After hedging bets with talk about "controlled bankruptcy," the Bush administration has decided to give the Big 3 loan guarantees that could not pass the Senate. The White House has decided to come to the rescue of General Motors and Chrysler by providing them with $17.4 billion in low-interest loans to keep them afloat, ABC News has learned. The money ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on December 19, 2008 09:34
Money For Nothing, Loans for Free
The Fed cut their lending rate to zero. A surprised Wall Street bolted higher Tuesday after the Federal Reserve's historic decision to further slash interest rates and provide broad support to revive the troubled economy. The Dow Jones industrials surged 360 points, or 4.2 percent, and broader indexes jumped more than 5 percent after the central bank said it will use ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on December 16, 2008 18:35
Public Opposes Auto Bailout
The public opposes bailing out the Big 3 automakers by a wide margin because they believe the companies are responsible for their own failure and doubt that their going bankrupt will hurt the economy, a new WaPo-ABC poll finds. Overall, 55 percent of those polled oppose the latest plan that Chrysler, Ford and General Motors executives pitched to Congress last week, ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on December 16, 2008 08:37
Auto Bailout Dead, Politics Alive and Well
Senate Republicans killed the bailout deal worked out between President Bush and congressional leaders that had previously passed the House. NYT: The failure to reach agreement on Capitol Hill raised a specter of financial collapse for General Motors and Chrysler, which say they may not be able to survive through this month. After Senate Republicans balked at supporting a $14 billion auto ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on December 12, 2008 08:02
Defaulting Homeowners Default Again After Relief
Roughly three in five people who got bailed after failing to pay back home loans are back in trouble in short order according to a shocking government report. (Well, shocking to government officials. Otherwise, entirely predictable.) Recent data suggests that many borrowers who received help with mortgage modifications earlier this year tended to re-default on their payments, a top U.S. ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on December 9, 2008 15:46
Not Buying Troubled Assets After All
Remember that emergency bailout, wherein the world would come to a complete halt if the government didn't buy up all the bad loans? Hank Paulson says "Never mind." [caption id="attachment_27369" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, AP/YahooNews Photo"][/caption] Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson says that the $700 billion government rescue program will not be used to purchase troubled assets as originally planned. Paulson ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on November 12, 2008 10:55
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Bailout Debacle
The widespread rumors of a government bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have already had dramatic consequences, perhaps creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. Iain Dey and Dominic Rushe, writing for The Times of London, note that, "The two companies lost almost half their market value last week as rumours of a government bail-out swept the stock markets, hammering share ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 13, 2008 07:53
Obama’s ‘Sweetheart’ Home Loan
The Manufactured Outrage of the Day comes to us from Joe Stephens and his page A3 piece for today's Washington Post, "Obama Got Discount on Home Loan." Shortly after joining the U.S. Senate and while enjoying a surge in income, Barack Obama bought a $1.65 million restored Georgian mansion in an upscale Chicago neighborhood. To finance the purchase, he secured a ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 2, 2008 15:15
