Clik here to view.
One Reason the Economy Sucks in Graphs
Yesterday I was talking with a medium-sized, regional bank vice president at the Mortgage Bankers Association annual convention in Atlanta about what it is going to take for banks to start investing...
View ArticleMontana Wants Money for Nothing
On Tuesday, Montana voted overwhelmingly to cap interest rates for payday loans at 36 percent annually. Similar caps passed in the last election cycle in Ohio and Arizona, limiting the amount companies...
View ArticleWhat Could Go Wrong With QE2
On Wednesday the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC)—the policy making body of the Federal Reserve—announced it is directing the Fed to buy $600 billion in Treasury bonds over the next 8 months. Since...
View ArticleUncertainty
Is uncertainty one of the reasons banks aren't lending and the economy remains lethargic? I'd say the answer is a clear yes. I've had this debate with a number of people in the past months. Most...
View ArticleCongress Forces Millions to Cut Up Their Credit Cards
Eight million Americans cut up their credit cards this year, according to new data out from credit bureau TransUnion. Some of those plastic deserters were folks who faced scary economic conditions and...
View ArticleWhy Do the Poor Stay Poor?
Of the 6 billion people on Earth, 2 billion try to survive on a few dollars a day. They don't build businesses, or if they do, they don't expand them. Unlike people in the United States, Europe, and...
View ArticlePlease Stop "Helping" Us
Last year, Congress passed the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure (CARD) Act. It was supposed to really end the alleged abuses perpetrated by the credit card companies. The law...
View ArticleObama Isn't Fooling Anyone
President Barack Obama penned a witty Wall Street Journal op-ed this week, titled "Toward a 21st-Century Regulatory System."In it, he extolled the virtues of a free market system. And to prove that his...
View ArticleCramdowns Could Return
There has been a lot of talk over the past several weeks about a plot by federal and state regulators to force banks to modify as much as $20 billion in mortgages for their role in robo-gate. I had a...
View ArticleOur Dodd-Frank Commentaries
With the GOP looking to begin Dodd-Frank reform work, here is a breakdown of our commentaries last year pushing back on Dodd-Frank and suggesting alternative ideas:An Essay: Towards an Alternative...
View ArticleDear Congress, Your Credit Application Has Been Turned Down
The Honorable _________ U.S. House of Representatives Washington, DC 20515The Honorable _________ United States Senate Washington, D.C. 20510Dear Mr. or Ms. _______,Thank you for your interest in the...
View ArticleRichard Cordray as CFPB Director is No Better than Elizabeth Warren
After a year of dithering, on Monday, July 18, President Obama finally nominated someone for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) directorship—and surprise, surprise, it is not Elizabeth...
View ArticleThe CFPB's Ironically Complicated Regulations
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau launched last month, without a confirmed director and with a slew of legislation attempting to fix its broken structure getting passed out of the House but...
View ArticleMoodys Sounds the Alarm on Student Borrowing
A growing chorus of economists and educators think that the higher education industry will be America's next bubble. Easy credit, high tuition, and poor job prospects have resulted in growing...
View ArticleWells Fargo Customers Feel the Sting of So-Called Consumer Protection
Round two of the Durbin Swipe Fee Watch:On December 17, 2010 we wrote on this blog that if the Fed's proposed interchange fee rule (as ordered by the Durbin Amendment in DFA) that would limit banks to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Nonfarm Productivity Revised Down
Nonfarm business productivity in the second quarter of 2011 was revised down from -0.3% to -0.7% last week. The Bureau of Labor Statistics number is the worst slide in productivity since the end of...
View ArticleStimulus Redux: Breaking Down the American Jobs Act
The American Jobs Act has not received a very warm welcome on Capitol Hill. Republicans have balked at many of the ideas in the package, and predictably rejected the idea of raising taxes to pay for...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Shopping Our Way to Recovery
My colleague, Anthony Randazzo, wrote a column today pointing to the recovery of consumer demand as not being the solution to the economy’s core problem. Keynesians and especially pro-stimulus...
View ArticleLong-term Consumer Outlook
The Michigan Consumer Survey for September came out today showing continued weakness in consumer sentiment, in fact consumers are 12.9 percent more dour now than they were last year at this time. The...
View ArticleDurbin Watch IV: Redbox Edition
This week we have a special edition of our Durbin Amendment Swipe Fee Watch, focusing on the elimination of discounts previously offered to merchants processing a large number of debit transactions for...
View Article