Bank stocks are taking the rest of the market down with them today following Obama’s bank regulation proposal announcement. He calls for an end to government backing for banks that engage in proprietary trading. His proposal would have to be approved by congress. Earlier today, Mike Konczal at NewDeal2.0 wrote a piece about the likely
Glass Steagall
We missed this BusinessWeek interview with Paul Volcker over the holidays but after reading it, we’re in his corner on bank reform and said something very similar earlier in December when McCain proposed reinstating Glass Steagall. It’s just that Volcker is much more definitive about it. He clarified that he’s not advocating an outright return
Yesterday Senators John McCain (R-Arizona) and Maria Cantwell (D-Washington) proposed reinstating Glass Steagall, the Depression-era body of financial regulations that, among other things, kept traditional banking activities like deposits and lending separate from more sophisticated activities like securities trading and insurance. Glass Steagall was repealed by the Gramm Leach Bliley Act in 1999, which enabled
Fortune reports that big bank deposits have outpaced loans in the year ended June 30, 2009. These two graphs from the story show loan/deposit stats among top banks and market share of deposits for big vs. rest of banks—also below are key stats from the story. This isn’t to say it’s all Evil Banker Greed,
The financial crisis that began in August 2007 and continues today (October 2009) has—at least for now—brought consumer banking back to “savings and loan” basics. Up to the 1980s, before loan securitization found its footing, consumer banking was community focused, bank reps knew their clients’ current and projected finances intimately, and funded home loans from
Is Ken Lewis suggesting a rebirth of Glass Steagall? If so, the Grave of Phil Gramm’s must be turning over. And also the special interests of Gramm’s decades-long crusade to deregulate banking must have gotten to him, as the story that started this rumor has been updated. Lewis said something of the sort after a
Years ago when I was working for UBS, I read this book on Goldman Sachs, because I wanted to see how their culture had evolved up to the IPO stage—the book came out the same year as their IPO. Our company had been a private partnership (Brinson Partners) that sold to UBS a few years
JP Morgan Chase is the big winner in the market carnage.
Back in June, Portfolio.com released tournament brackets where users can vote on who killed the economy. Even though blame can’t rest with a single person or entity, this is a fun tool that’s still on their most-read list. Interestingly, former senator and current UBS investment banking executive Phil Gramm was not even on the list.
Up until July, former Texas senator and now vice chairman of UBS Securities, Phil Gramm was John McCain’s top economic advisor. Then he called America a “nation of whiners” facing “a mental recession” and was pushed behind the scenes. But he’s still actively supporting the campaign, like today at an event close to the GOP
UBS was a pioneer in the post-Glass Steagall world, being one of the largest firms to successfully combine banking, investment banking, wealth management and money management operations. This all happened around 2000, one year after the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act repealed Glass Steagall in 1999. You & Us was the ubiquitous tagline to mark the era. An
Tonight MSNBC reported that former Senator Phil Gramm, campaign co-chair for presidential hopeful John McCain, was working for for UBS AG and against proposed foreclosure legislation that would help troubled homeowners keep their homes. Gramm officially joined the McCain campaign on March 12, 2007… but as early as October, 2006, RealClearPolitics reported that McCain was
After two days of Congressional hearings exploring the Bear Stearns bailout, it’s bailout burnout. Lawmakers grilling those who brokered the $2-per-share Bear Stearns bailout during a long, strenuous weekend is not unlike the mom in Risky Business grilling her son Joel (Tom Cruise) about why her crystal egg got cracked while she was out of
As market players and regulators sort through the credit crunch wreckage, there are two main questions: (1) Is the worst over for the markets? and (2) What regulatory actions are needed to prevent this from happening again? In the short time since the Fed helped JP Morgan Chase bail out Bear Stearns in an effort
Today Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson spoke at the US Chamber of commerce on ‘Current Financial and Housing Markets’. The full text of the speech is below. There are a few highlights. First, he said that the Fed’s announcement in the wake of the Bear Stearns bailout to allow investment banks to access Fed resources like