finreg

Of the universal-policy-bloggers who occasionally wade into financial waters, Matt Yglesias is generally one of the best. But sometimes he's just flat wrong, and his post today on financial profits is one of those times. more »

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Today, President Barack Obama will sign into law the first serious effort to regulate Wall Street in decades. The bill has much to be said for it, but the unfortunate truth is that it ducks several of the most critical reforms needed to protect our economy from banker abuse. more »

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"What do I have to do to get you into this car?"

"How much can you afford to pay every month?"

"My manager's in a good mood."

These are the car salesman cliches everybody knows. Now they're trying to add a couple more to the repertoire: more »

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President Obama's Department of Justice announced last week that there would be no indictments in the collapse of AIG, an event which led to a worldwide economic collapse and cost the American taxpayer trillions. As someone who once worked for AIG I was shocked, but apparently that's how this mystery ends: Hundreds of millions of victims, smoking guns in every room, and not a perp to be found anywhere.

Yves Smith is disappointed that PriceWaterhouseCoopers, the auditors who signed off on AIG's financial claims despite mounds of disturbing evidence, escaped serious legal scrutiny. She observes that our "Potemkin" financial reform (her word) won't remove the barriers that prosecutors face in pursuing secondary parties like auditors (although I believe the Supreme Court ruling she cited only addressed civil suits.) Not only is the auditor protected, but that allows the fraudster himself to use the defense that he kept his auditor informed - kind of like Bush and Cheney using John Yoo's legal opinion to inoculate themselves from criminal prosecution.

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