Tag: Banking

The Department of Justice and the Treasury Department released guidelines aimed at smoothing the way for banks to start doing business with pot shops in Colorado.

Despite what everyone may think or say, Hillary Clinton isn't a sure thing to run away with the Democratic nomination in 2016. History shows it almost never happens the way it seems like it will happen.

Mint, a personal finance software site, posted one of those time-span graphics that have become the rage in documenting the ravages of the...

Here’s a good game for a rainy Sunday. Several credit card companies have launched a new Web site designed to help struggling card users manage their debts amid the economic downturn. The site includes tips to avoid penalties and links to access counseling services. But the fan favorite has to be an interactive tool allowing consumers to calculate the minimum installment required to pay off balances within a given time frame. It’s worth a whirl.

Reading a recent New York Times article on Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's relationship with the "finance club" he is charged with rescuing and regulating, Baseline Scenario blogger James Kwak makes a point many people have missed.

President Barack Obama's sheer popularity will make it harder for members of Congress to water down banking and finance regulations, but his willingness to play legislative hardball has already score a major victory over another key bank lobby priority: student loan subsidies.

At the Society of American Business Editors and Writers (SABEW) conference yesterday in Denver, the opening panel featured mainstream-media heavyweights admitting that journalists "blew" coverage of the financial crisis, that they missed the "big story" as it unfolded over the course of a decade. A root problem, as TV journalist Allan Dodds Frank put it, was the "posture of reverence" adopted by business reporters toward their subjects, a posture that sees CEOs as stars and "corporations as sexy."

Some of the largest U.S. banks may be on the ropes these days, but the disparity between the plight of financial executives and ordinary Americans has never been starker. Over the past two decades, the banking system has grown accustomed to scoring massive profits by preying on its own customers, making 2009's transition to pilfering taxpayer wallets an easy one. After burying the economy under a mountain of unaffordable debt, bank CEOs are now finding ways to subsidize their own paychecks with taxpayer bailout funds.

If Capitol Hill lawmakers were playing a high stakes game of chicken with the banking industry over your credit score, guess who just blinked? Mike Lillis, congressional reporter for our sister site The Washington Independent, examines the winners and losers in the latest setback on credit card reform to rein in outrageous rate hikes and hidden fees.

Monday, the state was presented with the downcast rural face of the banking crisis -- the fallout in Greeley of the bad loans and shrinking reserves that mark the nation's economic reality. How many more Greeleys should we expect to see in the next few months? According to the influential Baseline Scenario bloggers, it depends on who wins in the great and mostly unreported battle that's waging between the Finance Industry and the American People.