Crash Survival Zone

By Robert J. Shiller

Home prices in the United States have been falling for nearly three years, and the decline may well continue for some time.

Even the federal government has projected price decreases through 2010. As a baseline, the stress tests recently performed on big banks included a total fall in housing prices of 41 percent [...]

Bailing out the big US banks has done nothing to improve them

by Joseph E. Stiglitz

With all the talk of “green shoots” of economic recovery, America’s banks are resisting efforts to regulate them. While politicians talk about their commitment to regulatory reform to prevent a recurrence of the crisis, this is one area where the devil [...]

Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman said damage from the U.S. recession may persist “for a very long time,” with no clear engine for renewed growth.

“I’m really quite scared that we could muddle along,” Krugman said in a lecture today at the London School of Economics and Political Science. “I really do see the possibility of [...]

By Graham Summers
Yesterday I outlined how the mainstream financial media is completely overlooking the similarities between this latest rally and the one leading into the summer of 2008.
Today, I am beginning a three part series explaining why I expect this fall (3Q09) to be as bad, if not worse, than last year’s in real terms, [...]

Although President Obama’s $787 billion fiscal stimulus is still working its way through the pipeiline, Berkeley economist — and former Clinton Treasury official — Brad DeLong  makes the case for another round. In a draft of a letter  he says he may send Obama next week, he said:

“At the end of 2008, when your incoming [...]

When Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner unveiled the details of his plan to save America’s banks a little over two months ago, the markets raved, the country sighed with relief and Geithner went from punch line to potential hero overnight. Now the plan is in trouble, as parts of it struggle to get off the ground [...]

By Bob Chapman

A recovery is supposed to be in the works in the midst of increased savings, declining debt balances on credit cards, more bankruptcies, higher unemployment and new wave of foreclosures. Consumer participation in GDP is down from 72% to 70.4%. Bank and other financial firms’ balance sheets are what they say they are [...]

By Tiffiniy Cheng
We have the most fundamental fight over power ahead of us — either the banks get bigger and richer and more powerful, or we take away some of their political power for ourselves and our businesses.
Why does this fight matter? Because we have trillions of dollars in deficit, and the financial sector is [...]

The Perils of Securitization

By Mike Whitney

Is it possible to make hundreds of billions of dollars in profits on securities that are backed by nothing more than cyber-entries into a loan book?

It’s not only possible; it’s been done. And now the scoundrels who cashed in on the swindle have lined up outside the Federal Reserve building [...]

By Pam Martens

For the past eight months, we have been a nation focused on bailouts and bankruptcies. For the past ten years, we have been a nation ignoring massive wealth transfer and wealth concentration through a rigged Wall Street.

As simple and clear as this picture is, some of the brightest minds in this country are [...]