It's too bad so many people are falling into poverty at a time when it’s almost illegal to be poor. You won’t be arrested for shopping in a Dollar Store, but if you are truly, deeply, in-the-streets poor, you’re well advised not to engage in any of the biological necessities of life — like sitting, sleeping, lying down or loitering. City officials boast that there is nothing discriminatory about the ordinances that afflict the destitute, most of which go back to the dawn of gentrification in the ’80s and ’90s.
Companies that specialize in stock market forecasting and trading—such as Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, and JPMorgan Chase—pay very high salaries to their employee-vendors. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo just released data showing that these and other large banks are giving each of their 5000 trader-forecasters bonuses of at least one million dollars.
By now everybody must know that the top banking executives responsible for our economic meltdown have no shame. Otherwise they would not have dared give themselves such hefty bonuses as a deeply perverse reward for actions that caused millions of Americans to lose their jobs and homes. The $33 billion that the executives of the nine banks bailed out with taxpayer funds paid themselves in 2008 is all one needs to know about the depth of their amorality.
Seven days ago, the Cash for Clunkers program went into place. At midnight, the program will run out of money, having already supported the trade-in of 250,000 old cars.
This week, the Obama administration summoned mortgage company executives to Washington to demand they move faster to lower payments for homeowners sliding toward foreclosure. Treasury officials called on the companies to hire and train more people quickly to field applications for relief.
But industry insiders and legal experts say the limited capacity of mortgage companies is not the primary factor impeding the government’s $75 billion program to prevent foreclosures.
Burlington - It's
all about the benjamins. But for the past 18 months or so, consumers
have been less willing to part with their hard-earned cash, whether
that greenback has a picture of George Washington or Ben Franklin.
As national economies have stalled, so has the global
economy. Americans have seen the housing markets slump, car
manufacturers crash, and banks begging for bailouts.
But some forward thinking people in Berkshire County
prepared for this several years ago, resulting in a local currency that
has been purchased more than two million times.
WASHINGTON -- Federal programs aimed at modifying loans to stem foreclosures aren't working, witnesses told a Senate subcommittee, and some lawmakers again called on Congress to pass a bill allowing bankruptcy judges to modify home loans, a procedure known as mortgage cram-downs.
Separately, the Federal Reserve took steps to make lending terms more understandable as part of its efforts to avoid another mortgage meltdown, which triggered the deep recession worldwide.
LOS ANGELES - From the ninth floor of a downtown office building on Wilshire Boulevard, Jack Soussana delivered staggering numbers of mortgages to homeowners during the real estate boom, amassing a fortune.
By Mr. Soussana's own account, his customers fared less happily. He specialized in the exotic mortgages that have proved most prone to sliding into foreclosure, leaving many now scrambling to save their homes.
In June 2009, the U.S. economy saw its second
steepest decline in 27 years. New jobless claims increased,
business inventories fell and exports plunged as bad economic news
persisted.
Will the once high-flying American wealth
machine continue to produce the vast inequalities of the past?
A new order is emerging on Wall Street after the worst crisis since the Great Depression — one in which just a couple of victors are starting to tower over the handful of financial titans that used to dominate the industry.
On Thursday, JPMorgan Chase became the latest big bank to announce stellar second-quarter earnings. Its $2.7 billion profit, after record gains for Goldman Sachs, underscores how the government’s effort to halt a collapse has also set the stage for a narrowing concentration of financial power.
