The Federal Reserve, Neil Irwin told us earlier in the week, cannot do much for the majority of Americans in a struggling economy. They can only put money in the hands of the well-to-do, in the hopes that they spend more and increase economic growth, which will then trickle down to the masses. I think [...]

I have to chuckle at Ron Klain’s story about the subtle genius of the Obama Administration with respect to the payroll tax cut. Ron Klain was IN the Obama Administration. He was Joe Biden’s chief of staff for two years. This is like someone with the pen name “Larack Lobama” praising the President’s negotiating skills. [...]

A while back, House Democrats impressed upon the Federal Housing Finance Agency the need for some kind of principal modification program for underwater borrowers. One option proposed by Rep. Zoe Lofgren and the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys was a principal paydown plan. Under it, borrowers would get through a bankruptcy process a temporary [...]

Tim Geithner hopped a flight to Europe, hoping to ensure that the crisis in the Eurozone resolves itself without too much trouble for anyone – I mean, if you leave out the citizens of the affected countries, that is. You will find Geithner and other US officials holding the strings of many of the policies [...]

Zach Goldfarb’s article on Wall Street’s runaway profits since 2008 doesn’t break a lot of new ground, it just slices and dices the Obama 2012 campaign’s new attempt to position their candidate as some kind of anti-Wall Street crusader. The largest banks are larger than they were when Obama took office and are nearing the [...]

Matt Stoller’s piece on the latest in the foreclosure fraud settlement follies makes one very important point that I missed in my writeup: robo-signing is still happening. What makes these discussions so utterly absurd, so ridiculous, and farcical, is that robo-signing, an abuse the banks have admitted to and clam they’ve ceased, is still going [...]

Tim Geithner went on CNBC today and said that the Administration is getting right on the whole “prosecuting the people who defrauded the economy” thing. Asked on CNBC about the Occupy Wall Street movement’s frustrations over the lack of criminal charges related to the financial crisis, Geithner said action is on the way. “You’ve seen [...]

It’s clear that European policymakers are bumbling around, mainly because they don’t want to do the only steps that would actually work to end the crisis. Martin Feldstein, the conservative economist, basically gets this right in an op-ed today. It’s not a debt crisis, it’s a banking crisis. And in a larger sense, it’s a [...]

British newspapers are often sensational and sometimes wrong on big issues, so take this with a grain of salt. But the Telegraph reports that European leaders are constructing a “multi-trillion” euro plan to deal with the banking crisis that has gripped the continent. I very pointedly say “banking crisis” because we should wean ourselves off [...]

The zeal for fact-checking in the traditional media has gotten so intense that they have now taken to fact-checking principles. Glenn Kessler gives the “Buffett rule” this treatment, even while acknowledging that the deficit reduction plan “never really explains what that means, and administration officials have refused to lay out any detailed proposal.” We don’t [...]

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner forcefully denied the claim in a book by Ron Suskind that he ignored a request from the President to work up a plan to dissolve Citigroup. He further added that the entire theme of the book, about infighting in the White House over economic policy issues, bears “no resemblance to reality.” [...]