Posts Tagged ‘Ben Bernanke’
Bunning completely and totally pwns Ben Bernanke at the confirmation hearing.
Ron Paul on House floor about Bernanke’s Dislike Of An Audit Of The Fed
Haha, the FDIC now down to 8+ Billion in reserves was driven to tell banks to “stop breaking the law, please”. Unbelievable.
By Alistair Barr, MarketWatch
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said late Monday that banks should recognize losses on home loans promptly and warned that failure to do so could delay efforts to mitigate the financial impact.
Institutions must analyze the collectibility of the loans they hold for investment at least every quarter, the FDIC said in a statement on its Web site.
Banks then have to keep an appropriate allowance for loan and lease losses, covering estimated credit losses on individually evaluated loans that are deemed to be impaired, and on groups of loans with similar risk characteristics, the regulator said.
“When estimating credit losses on each group of loans with similar risk characteristics, an institution should consider its historical loss experience on the group, adjusted for changes in trends, conditions, and other relevant factors in the current economic environment,” the FDIC said.
This is especially important for loans secured by junior liens on 1-4 family residential properties in areas where there have been declines in the value of such properties, the regulator said.
“Failure to timely recognize estimated credit losses could delay appropriate loss mitigation activity, such as restructuring junior lien loans to more affordable payments or reducing principal on such loans to facilitate refinancings,” the FDIC said.
Oh and this from ZeroHedge >
The WSJ reports that “Timothy Geithner blasted top U.S. financial regulators in an expletive-laced critique last Friday as frustration grows over the Obama administration’s faltering plan to overhaul U.S. financial regulation.” Presumably the source of Geithner’s ire was Sheila Bair’s (and probably Mary Schapiro’s) unwillingness to yield power over to Bernanke.
Among those gathered in the Treasury conference room were Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Mary Schapiro and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair.
Friday’s roughly hourlong meeting was described as unusual, not only because of Mr. Geithner’s repeated use of obscenities, but because of the aggressive posture he took with officials from federal agencies generally considered independent of the White House. Mr. Geithner reminded attendees that the administration and Congress set policy, not the regulatory agencies.
And I say to Geithner – Fuck you too. Interesting situation if this is true. Something is going down here.
What do you have to hide, Ben? Congress would run monetary policy? Well, we currently have a group of unelected banks running monetary policy. So what’s his point? Oh and Ron Paul responds below and as usual completely destroys Bernanke’s argument.
Ron Paul on the Alex Jones show talking about his bill, hr 1207 an audit of the Fed.
Thank you, Ron Paul. Over the last few years I have been studying the Austrian business cycle theory and as such, almost every one of my preconceived notions about America, the world financial system and governance itself has greatly changed. I used to have an almost uninhibited American pride and damn near religious belief that America was “God’s democracy”, and as such – here to stay. This was nothing more than extreme hubris and pride. This hubris and pride lead me to support things like; the Iraq war, tax cuts without sufficient program cuts. I mean, we could do quite litterally – anything.
This is essentially what we libertarians are battling today; The belief by power makers that “we can afford it”. Whatever it is, we can always afford it.
While watching the PBS documentary on the economic crisis, I was amazed at how even incredibly bright, gifted economic thinkers failed so miserably at understanding the causes of the crisis. Nobody better illustrates this than one Henry Paulson – the guy who’s name is on your dollar bill. Ole’ Hank was a good ole’ Republican and Goldman Sachs man. A “free-market” prophet if there ever was one. He believed in and wanted to not allow moral hazard in the marketplace. He was “forced”, however, to give in and bailout companies thereby destroying any and all principles he ever believed in.
What would cause him to do such a thing?
The most succinct way I explain this is – He thought we had an open, honest market. That’s where his (and almost every other politician and economists) go wrong on this economic collapse. His principles only work if you actually have a free market, not what we ACTUALLY have - an over regulated, over manipulated and overly Government mandated market. That is – there is no free market and there hasn’t been for a very long time. All it takes is a little interference to create economic collapse. So once you start interfering, you have to interfere more and more until you get the results you want.
In a true, open and free market we never would have been in this mess to begin with. The GSE’s, or Government Sponsored Entities such as Fannie and Freddie would not have been able to amass some 5+ trillion dollars worth of mortgages and thereby create the mortgage collapse we see today. Government created this mess.
Indeed, almost every-single problem within the economic crisis, traces it’s routes back to government or the fed. The sooner we realize this in the mainstream world of media and books, the sooner we can rebuild our country based on sustainable principles of freedom, peace and prosperity (sound money).