All Posts Tagged With: "AIG"

Getting in Deeper

In what the Wall Street Journal calls “a watershed moment for government intervention in the private sector,” the Federal Reserve announced in October that it will regulate executive compensation at all banks so they will not have incentives to take on too much risk. Meanwhile, the Obama administration said it would cut by half (on [...]

5Jan2010 | Sheldon Richman | 1 comment | Continued

Ben Bernanke Saved the Day?

Instead of being “brave,” Bernanke has been reckless, just like a young driver playing “chicken.” There is a huge difference between bravery and bravado, and Bernanke’s actions reflect the latter not the former.

28Oct2009 | William L. Anderson | 3 comments | Continued

Transforming America: The Bush-Obama Stimulus Programs

George W. Bush’s and Barack Obama’s “stimulus” programs will permanently transform the American economy. The market-based system that has produced unprecedented prosperity relies on profit and loss, which rewards individuals and firms that add value to the economy and penalizes those that detract value. The various stimulus programs undermine that system. My discussion will focus [...]

19Aug2009 | Randall G. Holcombe | 13 comments | Continued

Who Watches Our Guardians?

Predictably, the leading inquisitors into the causes of the financial turmoil are themselves among the most culpable: Rep. Barney Frank, Sen. Chris Dodd, and New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. AIG got into trouble because it in effect wrote insurance policies (credit default swaps) against the failure of securities based on mortgages, many of which were waiting to blow up when the housing bubble burst. Who created the housing bubble?

21May2009 | Sheldon Richman | 1 comment | Continued

AIG Unregulated?

The story persists that AIG did what it did because it was “unregulated.” This implies, without evidence, that regulators would have understood the problem and would have done something. The New York Fed and others regulate the big Wall Street banks and look what happened.More fundamentally, we should understand that while credit default swaps were, [...]

6May2009 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | Continued

TGIF: Crocodile Tears over AIG

If politicians spill any more crocodile tears over AIG, the EPA might have to declare Washington, D.C., a protected wetland. Sweep aside the phony expressions of “outrage” over AIG’s government-financed $165 million in bonuses (the information was in black and white) and ask yourself this: Who supplied the money? The rest of this week’s TGIF [...]

20Mar2009 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | Continued

AIG Takes Incoming

Everyone is in a fit over the bonuses paid to AIG’s employees. President Obama vows to find a legal way to get the money back. (The bonuses apparently are contractual obligations.)Well, well, well. Oh what a tangled web we sprout when first we practice to bail out.

17Mar2009 | Sheldon Richman | 3 comments | Continued

Too Big to Fail

“Once you lose your freedom to fail, you also lose your freedom to succeed and you cease to be a free society.” —U.S. Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas In March 2008 the investment banking firm Bear Sterns failed and the federal government quickly stepped in. The public was inundated with the phrase “too big to fail” [...]

2Mar2009 | Michael Heberling | 8 comments | Continued

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