Forums: Finance

New Controversy: Financial Reform Bill Contains Quotas For Minority Hiring On Wall Street Joe Weisenthal | Jul. 28, 2010, 5:27 AM This is always how it goes with big bills. Politicians and the media focus on a few big issues (prop trading, the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, etc.) while small, but controversial measures, get slipped in the back door, and then become the subject of fascination several days after the bill has passed. It happened with healthcare, after people suddenly realized there was a provision to go after fast food. And now with the Dodd-Frank Act, according to POLITICO, there's...

There is strong concern that the lame-duck Congress will be used to pass the Catfood Commission’s recommendations to slash America’s social safety net with cuts to Social Security and Medicare benefits. The idea of a Democratic President and a Democratic Congress allowing cuts to our great social programs that will result in millions of seniors falling into poverty is a horrifying thought. Fortunately, progressives in the House have the power to stop this if they are willing to play hardball politics. The Catfood Commission, conveniently, won’t release its recommendations until early December. That’s too late to let voters incorporate it...

The rules of money are getting a makeover, and it's about time. With the implosion of the housing market, the collapse of credit, the upheaval on Wall Street, and our brush with a second Great Depression, we've all paid a high price for the abuses at the center of our economic mess. The fallout has been painful: trillions of dollars in lost savings, 7.6 million people newly unemployed, and record-high home foreclosures and bankruptcies—a tidal wave that has yet to crest. Among those hurt most are Americans over 50, who had more to lose and have less time to recover.How...

The new financial reform law has what some lawyers call a secret weapon against fraud on Wall Street and in corporate America: the promise of a million-dollar jackpot to insiders who reveal an illegal scheme to the government. Tucked in the massive bill is a provision that for the first time extends a concept long applied to government contracts to the private sector. It gives whistle-blowers a mandatory 10% — and as much as 30% — of what the government recoups in fines and settlements in financial fraud cases. These can include insider trading, false earnings reports and classic Ponzi...

WASHINGTON – Reveling over a new milestone in his presidency, a triumphant Barack Obama on Wednesday signed into law the most sweeping overhaul of lending and high-finance rules since the Great Depression, adding safeguards for millions of consumers and aiming to restrain Wall Street excesses that could set off a new recession ...

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration's effort to help those at risk of losing their homes is failing to aid many and could spur a rise in foreclosures that would further depress the housing industry. More foreclosures would force down home prices and that would deter already-ailing homebuilders from starting new projects.

I understand the concept of SWIFT codes, i.e. they are used when wiring money from one bank to another bank, either domestic or foreign. I am unclear, however, why a given bank will have multiple SWIFT codes, depending on the department or branch of the bank. I would think and hope that by now, regardless of the bank, a customer could go into any branch of that bank and process the receipt of the wire transfer, because of that bank's computer systems? Does it make sense, therefore, that the sender must specify the code for a particular branch? Thanks.

With U.S. deficits expected to top $1 trillion per year for the next decade, its no wonder more than 50% of Americas say the deficit is "dangerously out of control," according to a recent Bloomberg poll. But America's "sovereign debt hysteria" is "misguided," according to a recent report from the Jerome Levy Forecasting Center entitled: Uncle Sam Won't Go Broke. The firm's director of research, Srinivas Thiruvadanthai, joined me last week to discuss and debunk several common misperceptions about America's soaring deficit, including: U.S. = Greece: Comparing America to Greece is "like comparing apples to oranges," Thiruvadanthai says. Unlike Greece,...

Yesterday Hassan Nemazee was sentenced to 12 years in prison for running a Ponzi scheme some proceeds of which were funneled into Democratic campaigns. The New York financier was no stranger to liberal Democratic politics, having served as national finance chairman for Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign and New York state finance chairman for John Kerry's 2004 presidential run. He also donated a generous $50,000 to President Obama's inaugural festivities. Yet in reporting the development, both the Washington Post and the New York Times downplayed the story.