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Washington • Sen. Bob Bennett said Thursday he was unaware that anyone on his staff got special home loans through CountryWide Finance Corp. as alleged in a congressional letter delivered to the Senate Ethics Committee. But the Utah Republican said he would cooperate fully with any ethics investigation that takes place. “I do not have a loan with CountryWide and I do not inquire as to where my staffers go to get their mortgages,” Bennett said in an interview with The Tribune. “I have full faith in the integrity of the staff and the matter is going to be in...

Former President George W. Bush gets more blame for the country’s economic troubles than his successor or the Democrats who control Congress, according to a Harris poll out Wednesday. Thirty-one percent of the 2,344 adults surveyed said Bush deserves the most blame for a rough economy, leading the second-place Wall Street by 6 percentage points. Democrats in Congress were blamed by 16 percent of those polled, while President Barack Obama was blamed by 14 percent. Republicans in Congress were blamed by 9 percent of respondents, and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke was blamed by 4 percent. A majority of Democrats...

Rep. Barney Frank on Monday night called Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) “cowardly” for suggesting that he was misled by then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke in order to get his support for the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program. McCain told the Arizona Republic in a story published Monday that he was told the federal funds would only be used to address the meltdown in the housing industry. But, the Arizona senator – who is facing a primary challenge on his right from former Rep. J.D. Hayworth – told the paper, “obviously that didn’t happen.” Asked...

My proposition today is that we’re in a fiscal calamity caused by the further, and perhaps, final triumph of politics. Admittedly, I issued this very same forecast awhile back -- 23 years ago to be exact. But I’m not reluctant to try again. Having read Grant’s continuously since 1988, I’ve learned there’s no shame whatsoever in being early -- even often! The Triumph of Politics was published early, mainly in the unflattering sense that I’d not completed my homework. I was hip to statist fiscal and regulatory evils, but had only dimly grasped the Austrian masters’ wisdom on money; that...

(snip) I am concerned, however, that a number of the legislative proposals being circulated would significantly reduce the capacity of the Federal Reserve to perform its core functions. Notably, some leading proposals in the Senate would strip the Fed of all its bank regulatory powers. And a House committee recently voted to repeal a 1978 provision that was intended to protect monetary policy from short-term political influence. These measures are very much out of step with the global consensus on the appropriate role of central banks, and they would seriously impair the prospects for economic and financial stability in the...

(snip) "We participated in things that were clearly wrong and have reason to regret," said Goldman Sachs’ Lloyd Blankfein. "We apologize." Blankfein had told a British newspaper the other day that Goldman was doing “God’s work”. That caused a firestorm online. (snip)

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One year after bank's failure, depositors fight on. BY ERIKA CHAVEZ Dozens of IndyMac Federal Bank customers who lost uninsured deposits after the bank's sudden failure last year rallied Monday to draw attention to their continuing plight. Members of the group, which organized online and numbers 250 people throughout California, gathered in front of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation's West Coast satellite office in Irvine, braving the heat to make their voices heard. The goal: to persuade FDIC officials to reimburse their lost money and let consumers know that their savings might not be safe, despite the fact that the...

IndyMac died a year ago Saturday, the first major thrift to fail in the financial crisis. Its burial, marked by confusion, chaos, and a relatively sweet deal for a group of private equity titans, is unlikely to happen in the same manner today. The aftermath of IndyMac, since renamed OneWest Bank, is telling, and provides a stark illustration of how much things have changed in the course of a year.

MACON, Ga. — H. Averett Walker used hot money to turn Security Bank from a sleepy Southern lender into a regional powerhouse. Darrell D. Pittard used hot money to jump-start his brand-new MagnetBank, allowing it to lend hundreds of millions of dollars even though it did not have a single drive-up window or even a customer with a checking account. It is a formula being replicated at banks across the United States. Rather than simply wooing local customers, they have turned to out-of-state brokers who deliver billions of dollars in bulk deposits, widely known as “hot money,” from investors nationwide....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1PEdYYv0ig

On Wednesday, September 24, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., phoned Reid and told him, “Harry, I am suspending my campaign to come back and help negotiate a deal.” McCain explained that he was also calling upon Obama to suspend his campaign, and together they could convene a meeting at the Bush White House to help come to a deal on a bailout for Wall Street. Reid didn't think it was such a great idea... "They were on the verge of an agreement, and any such McCain stunt would cost us valuable time," writes Reid, also noting that McCain "had no standing...

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Geithner is charging, is covering up. Just like Paulson did before him. Geithner is publicly saying that it’s going to take $2 trillion — a trillion is a thousand billion — $2 trillion taxpayer dollars to deal with this problem. But they’re allowing all the banks to report that they’re not only solvent, but fully capitalized. Both statements can’t be true. It can’t be that they need $2 trillion, because they have masses losses, and that they’re fine. These are all people who have failed. Paulson failed, Geithner failed. They were all promoted because they failed, not...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Washington Mutual Inc, the failed U.S. savings and loan, has sued the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp for well over $13 billion in connection with the loss of its banking operations, which was acquired by JPMorgan Chase & Co. In a complaint filed with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the thrift's former parent accused the FDIC of having on January 23 made a "cryptic disallowance" of its claims, prompting the lawsuit. It also accused the FDIC of agreeing to an unreasonably low price in arranging the a $1.9 billion sale of the banking...

WASHINGTON (CNN) – Republican Sen. John McCain and Democratic Sen. Byron Dorgan plan to introduce legislation to create a Senate panel to investigate the causes of the financial crisis, McCain’s office said in a statement Monday. If approved, the committee would also make recommendations about how to avoid a similar crisis in the future.

<excerpt>In the middle of last week I tipped over from a state of mild fearfulness about the global economy to one of wild panic over what is to become of us. On Wednesday, I became host to all sorts of crazy worries – big, unmanageable ones as well as little, stupid ones. I worried about there being anarchy on the streets of London – while at the same time fretting over whether I should have painted the boxroom cream rather than white. This is the sort of mixed-up mental state I am familiar with from bouts of wakefulness at three...

Ocala National Bank, Ocala, Florida, was closed today by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) was named receiver. To protect the depositors, the FDIC entered into a purchase and assumption agreement with CenterState Bank of Florida, Winter Haven, Florida, to assume all of the deposits of the Ocala National Bank. The four locations of Ocala National will reopen on Monday, February 2, 2009, as branches of CenterState. Depositors of the failed bank will automatically become depositors of CenterState Bank. Deposits will continue to be insured by the FDIC, so there is...

Federal regulators this evening seized Suburban Federal Savings Bank in Crofton, Md., in the first bank failure in the Washington area since 1993. Suburban Federal, a small bank with seven branches, was immediately sold to Virginia-based Bank of Essex. All deposits were protected. The failure was not a surprise. Suburban Federal was freighted by mounting losses on a portfolio of mortgage loans. The company had been told to find a buyer or face seizure. An insurance company briefly flirted with the idea, then backed away. Last week, regulators had issued the bank a final warning. The problems in the banking...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. bank regulators on Friday closed MagnetBank, a small Utah bank, bringing the total of bank failures this year to four. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp said it could not find a buyer for MagnetBank's banking operations, but that it had approved the payout of the bank's insured deposits. FDIC was named as the receiver of the bank, which had total assets of $292.9 million and total deposits of $282.8 million.

WASHINGTON: A top Republican congressional aide says the $800 billion-plus economic stimulus measure could steer government checks to illegal immigrants. Republican officials are concerned that the Democratic-written legislation makes people who came to the United States illegally eligible for tax credits of $500 per worker and $1,000 per couple. A House-passed version of the bill and one making its way through the Senate both disqualify nonresident aliens from receiving the credits. But neither requires a worker to have a Social Security number to get the credits. An economic aid measure enacted in February 2008 that sent rebates to most wage...