We’re All Bernie Madoff: Welcome to the Ponzi Nation
This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website. Every great American boom and bust makes and breaks its share of crooks. The past decade—call it the Ponzi Era—has been no different, except for the gargantuan scale of white-collar crime. A vast wave of financial fraud swelled in the first years of the new century. Then, in 2008, with the subprime mortgage collapse, it crashed... Read More
A Crash Course on the Financial Meltdown — Pecora Part II Begins
Cross-posted from MotherJones.com. The 10 members of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, the modern heir to the famous Pecora Commission convened in the wake of Wall Street’s 1929 crash, kicked off a marathon set of hearings on Wednesday and Thursday by grilling some of Wall Street’s most powerful executives, the regulators supposedly tasked with reining them in,... Read More
Dispatch from Foreclosureland
Cross-posted with Mother Jones In August, I wrote about the Obama administration’s flawed $75 billion homeowner rescue effort, the Home Affordable Modification Program, and therein introduced readers to Florida homeowner Kristina Page. Page’s mortgage company, Saxon Mortgage Services, first told her it hadn’t heard of HAMP. Then, when Saxon finally admitted Page... Read More
The Illusion of Recovery in Subprime America
That’s the gist of my new piece published today at TomDispatch.com. While there’s plenty of projections and guesses on how long it’ll taking the housing industry to recover, far fewer are the firsthand, boots-on-the-ground reports on how struggling homeowners are faring right now with explosive interest rates, underwater mortgages, and uncooperative servicers or... Read More
