I finally saw HBO’s Too Big To Fail, a movie based on Andrew Ross Sorkin’s book of the same name. It was about Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson’s enactment of TARP during the darkest days of the financial crisis, and begins with Treasury taking over Fannie and Freddie on Sunday, September 7, 2008. That day, my [...]

The folks at Dictionary.com aren’t always topical on their word of the day choices, and I’m not even sure that’s their goal, but they certainly nailed it today with the word panjandrum. It means an important personage or pretentious official, and today was jam packed with panjandrums. In fact, I didn’t even get a chance [...]

Former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson gave his testimony on the BofA/Merrill deal to the House Committee on Oversight & Government Reform this morning, and he’s still being cross-examined now, a couple of hours later. Watching it, the only thing that comes to mind is a little lesson from the movie Clear & Present Danger. In [...]

The former Treasury secretary, Henry Paulson, is writing a book about his role in the Bush administration during the economic crisis. Oddly, the book starts on Chapter 11. End of Month Lender Strain It is the last day of the month. Not only are Ops departments everywhere scrambling to fund loans while they keep an [...]

Citigroup has said that it will lend $25.7b in mortgages, $2.5b in consumer loans, $1b in student loans, $5.8b in credit cards, and $1.5b in corporate loans in the near future using $36.5b of the $45b in TARP funds it has received from Treasury. This should be seen as a welcome development after TARP creator [...]

Below is a proposal from George Soros on how to bailout the banks. It’s on his website and recently ran in the Financial Times. His proposal weighs two ideas: (1) the ‘bad bank’ idea that’s been floating around which says that the FDIC leads an effort, modeled after the original TARP incarnation, to buy illiquid [...]

Amazon.com WidgetsOn this last day of the current administration, we have a special bTunes dedication for outgoing Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. It comes after massive heat he’s taken for his handling of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). The song is I Will Not Apologize by The Roots, off their eighth album Rising Down which [...]

Citi + Morgan Stanley To Be Called CITIMORG According to current financial reports, a deal to combine the brokerages of Citigroup and Morgan Stanley — which would give Citi more cash, and Morgan Stanley more manpower — appears just days away. In light of the new venture with Morgan Stanley, the new entity name will [...]

There is $350b left in of the original $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program funds that were approved by Congress and the White House in October. At that time, funds were to be used to buy troubled assets from banks—illiquid mortgage securities mostly—to get banks to regain their appetite for lending again. Right after TARP [...]

Wall Street Journal doing satire? “Christmas list swaps?” Not sure this is funny, nor a good idea for the WSJ.