Like everyone else but two members of the House, Paul Ryan voted for the STOCK Act, a watered-down version of a bill that would ban insider trading among members of Congress. Before he did that, however, Ryan spent 2008 wheeling and dealing his bank stock portfolio to match his knowledge gained as a member of [...]

I mentioned yesterday that Goldman Sachs got a rare “reverse Wells notice” from the SEC, when they were told that a mortgage-backed securities deal which they earlier heard they would face prosecution for would not net them any civil enforcement. But that was just the beginning. Later in the day, they learned they would not [...]

Goldman Sachs announced in a regulatory filing that the Securities and Exchange Commission has closed their investigation into the firm misleading investors on a $1.3 billion subprime mortgage-backed security deal. This represents a flip for the SEC, which notified Goldman of impending action back in February: In February, Goldman received a so-called Wells notice from [...]

This sounds like a right terrible idea: New York City, embracing an experimental mechanism for financing social services that has excited and worried government reformers around the world, will allow Goldman Sachs to invest nearly $10 million in a jail program, with the pledge that the financial services giant would profit if the program succeeded [...]

Boy, the financial industry is really circling the wagons in the wake of Sandy Weill’s comments endorsing a breakup of big banks and the separation of investment and commercial banking. The finance lobby has revved up their sympathetic sources to ensure the world that change will never come, and anyway that it’s irrelevant. First, they [...]

If the Libor scandal did end up hurting local governments to a large degree, you can just add that to the list. Local governments have been easy marks for the financial industry during the last decade, engaging in all kinds of interest rate-swap deals and other vehicles for financing operations. When they turn sour, the [...]

As part of Dodd-Frank, systemically important financial institutions (SIFIs) had to put out “living wills” that explained how they would wind themselves down with the least overall disruption in the event of their failure. This was a contested proposition in Dodd-Frank, because many made the compelling point that a megabank with important connections all over [...]

I guess Alan Simpson and his recurring set of bad manners has become too much of a liability to those intrepid grand bargaineers. So he’s been pulled for a reliever. Enter Judd Gregg, himself just out of the Senate. Former Sen. Judd Gregg (N.H.) is stepping up his role in building Republican support for a [...]

The chart above is from a Goldman Sachs analysis, and it shows the effect of fiscal policy on growth from 2009 to the present, as well as projections for growth in a variety of scenarios surrounding the fiscal cliff, the combination of expiring tax cuts and imminent spending cuts all set for the end of [...]

I really highly recommend Paul Kiel’s new ebook “The Great American Foreclosure Story,” which focuses on the foreclosure crisis and the cascade of abuse piled on troubled borrowers by servicers. It looks at one foreclosure in particular, but uses it to stand in for the larger crisis in a really great way. One theme of [...]

An interesting new research note from Goldman Sachs analyzes the “fiscal cliff” and the prospects for fiscal conservatism resulting from the potential outcomes of the 2012 elections. Goldman remains a vampire squid, but their economic research notes are quite good. If there’s one thing they know about it’s money. And their assessment of the political [...]