FinancialStability.gov
http://financialstability.gov/

obama's fc plan

obama plan website

A few weeks ago Obama's new secretary or treasury Tim Geitner unveiled the outlines of a plan to fix the financial crisis in our Country. One of the problems with these massive plans from the government is that citizens want to know exactly where their money is going. This is the treasury secretary's answer to that problem this site will document where all the money for the proposed plan will be documented and will be able to track.

Obama run site to track stimuls package spending

The Nobel winning formula

long form documentary on the financial crisis. Audio editing/narrative is strong

"How the economy went so bad, so fast and what Bernanke and Paulson did't see, couldn't stop and weren't able to fix."

Iceland’s de facto bankruptcy—its currency (the krona) is kaput, its debt is 850 percent of G.D.P., its people are hoarding food and cash and blowing up their new Range Rovers for the insurance—resulted from a stunning collective madness. What led a tiny fishing nation, population 300,000, to decide, around 2003, to re-invent itself as a global financial power? In Reykjavík, where men are men, and the women seem to have completely given up on them, the author follows the peculiarly Icelandic logic behind the meltdown.

Iceland’s de facto bankruptcy—its currency (the krona) is kaput, its debt is 850 percent of G.D.P., its people are hoarding food and cash and blowing up their new Range Rovers for the insurance—resulted from a stunning collective madness. What led a tiny fishing nation, population 300,000, to decide, around 2003, to re-invent itself as a global financial power? In Reykjavík, where men are men, and the women seem to have completely given up on them, the author follows the peculiarly Icelandic logic behind the meltdown.

A beautiful piece by Michael Lewis about the Iceland economy which went bankrupt in 2008.

The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States. One of the most alarming, says a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government—a state of affairs that more typically describes emerging markets, and is at the center of many emerging-market crises. If the IMF’s staff could speak freely about the U.S., it would tell us what it tells all countries in this situation: recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform.

But these various policies—lightweight regulation, cheap money, the unwritten Chinese-American economic alliance, the promotion of homeownership—had something in common. Even though some are traditionally associated with Democrats and some with Republicans, they all benefited the financial sector. Policy changes that might have forestalled the crisis but would have limited the financial sector’s profits—such as Brooksley Born’s now-famous attempts to regulate credit-default swaps at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, in 1998—were ignored or swept aside.

A withering op-ed by Simon Johnson on the policy disaster that is our financial sector. But he's still not willing to re-evaluate the underlying premise of perpetually debt fueled exponential economic growth. How, exactly, was this all supposed to work out?

The most lucid summary I've read to date on the current global financial crisis. Written in a clear manner by Simon Johnson, a professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, and a former the chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. His conclusion: Nationalize the banks immediately, break up the financial oligarchies which have brought us to this point, and recast the entire banking sector so the blackmail of "we're too big too fail" cannot be used again.

"Oh, look. Here's the jerk who wrote the code that broke everything. A confession."

The financial industry brought the economy to its knees, but how did they get away with it? With the nation wondering how to hold the bankers accountable, Bill Moyers sits down with William K. Black, the former senior regulator who cracked down on banks during the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s. Black offers his analysis of what went wrong and his critique of the bailout

Now Black is focused on an even greater scandal, and he spares no one — not even the President he worked hard to elect, Barack Obama. But his main targets are the Wall Street barons, heirs of an earlier generation whose scandalous rip-offs of wealth back in the 1930s earned them comparison to Al Capone and the mob, and the nickname "banksters."

The former Director of the Institute for Fraud Prevention now teaches Economics and Law at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. During the savings and loan crisis, it was Black who accused then-house speaker Jim Wright and five US Senators, including John Glenn and John McCain, of doing favors for the S&L's in exchange for contributions and other perks. The senators got off with a slap on the wrist, but so enraged was one of those bankers, Charles Keating — after whom the senate's so-called "Keating Five" were named — he sent a memo that read, in part, "get Black — kill him dead." Metaphorically, of course. Of course. Now Black is focused on an even greater scandal, and he spares no one — not even the President he worked hard to elect, Barack Obama. But his main targets are the Wall Street barons, heirs of an earlier generation whose scandalous rip-offs of wealth back in the 1930s earned them comparison to Al Capone and the mob, and the nickname "banksters."

video from jonas' recomendation

10 principles to rebuild on.

1. What is fragile should break early while it is still small. Nothing should ever become too big to fail. 2. No socialisation of losses & privatisation of gains. 3. People who were driving a school bus blindfolded (& crashed it) should never be given a new bus. 4. No incentives without disincentives: capitalism is about rewards and punishments, not just rewards. 5. Complexity from globalisation and highly networked economic life needs to be countered by simplicity in financial products. The complex economy is already a form of leverage: the leverage of efficiency. 6. Complex derivatives need to be banned because nobody understands them and few are rational enough to know it. 7. Governments should never need to “restore confidence”. 8. Using leverage to cure the problems of too much leverage is not homeopathy, it is denial. 9. Citizens should not depend on financial assets or fallible “expert” advice for their retirement. 10. we will have to remake the system before it does so itself"

Taleb k současné krizi

2. No socialisation of losses and privatisation of gains. Whatever may need to be bailed out should be nationalised; whatever does not need a bail-out should be free, small and risk-bearing. We have managed to combine the worst of capitalism and socialism. In France in the 1980s, the socialists took over the banks. In the US in the 2000s, the banks took over the government. This is surreal.

movement in the banking security industry

Hackers are getting our bank security pin codes!

Hackers have crossed into new frontiers by devising sophisticated ways to steal large amounts of personal identification numbers, or PINs, protecting credit and debit cards, says an investigator. The attacks involve both unencrypted PINs and encrypted PINs that attackers have found a way to crack, according to an investigator behind a new report looking at the data breaches.

Some of the attacks involve grabbing unencrypted PINs, while they sit in memory on bank systems during the authorization process. But the most sophisticated attacks involve encrypted PINs. Sartin says the latter attacks involve a device called a hardware security module (HSM), a security appliance that sits on bank networks and on switches through which PIN numbers pass on their way from an ATM or retail cash register to the card issuer. The module is a tamper-resistant device that provides a secure environment for certain functions, such as encryption and decryption, to occur. According to the payment-card industry, or PCI, standards for credit card transaction security, PIN numbers are supposed to be encrypted in transit, which should theoretically protect them if someone intercepts the data. The problem, however, is that a PIN must pass through multiple HSMs across multiple bank networks en route to the customer's bank. These HSMs are configured and managed d

Yves & TWA (comments) say this article has some fact checking issues

According to the payment-card industry, or PCI, standards for credit card transaction security, PIN numbers are supposed to be encrypted in transit, which should theoretically protect them if someone intercepts the data. The problem, however, is that a PIN must pass through multiple HSMs across multiple bank networks en route to the customer's bank. These HSMs are configured and managed differently, some by contractors not directly related to the bank. At every switching point, the PIN must be decrypted, then re-encrypted with the proper key for the next leg in its journey, which is itself encrypted under a master key that is generally stored in the module or in the module's application programming interface, or API.

Great foresight from the guy who tried to beat the poker pros

While the nation's lenders ran amok during the boom, Andy Beal hoarded his money. Now he's cleaning up - with scant help from Uncle Sam.

Andy Beal, a 56-year-old, poker-playing college dropout, is a one-man toxic-asset eater--without a shred of government assistance. Beal plays his cards patiently. For three long years, from 2004 to 2007, he virtually stopped making or buying loans. While the credit markets were roaring and lenders were raking in billions, Beal shrank his bank's assets because he thought the loans were going to blow up. He cut his staff in half and killed time playing backgammon or racing cars. He took long lunches with friends, carping to them about "stupid loans." His odd behavior puzzled regulators, credit agencies and even his own board. They wondered why he was seemingly shutting the bank down, resisting the huge profits the nation's big banks were making. One director asked him: "Are we a dinosaur?"

Author of mortgage backed security software.

http://www.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&title=My+Manhattan+Project&expire=&urlID=35003522&fb=Y&url=http%3A%2F%2Fnymag.com%2Fnews%2Fbusiness%2F55687%2F&partnerID=73272--- manhanttan ManhattanProject

My Manhattan Project How I helped build the bomb that blew up Wall Street.

I have been called the devil by strangers and “the Facilitator” by friends. It’s not uncommon for people, when I tell them what I used to do, to ask if I feel guilty. I do, somewhat, and it nags at me. When I put it out of mind, it inevitably resurfaces, like a shipwreck at low tide. It’s been eight years since I compiled a program, but the last one lived on, becoming the industry standard that seeded itself into every investment bank in the world.

Online resources to help manage money

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Many banks have started using social websites to help them with everything from healing the financial industry to promoting their latest credit cards. By embracing the most popular tools available, the industry has also been embracing the best of what social media culture has to offer, and smaller, community banks seem to be leading the charge when it comes to social media innovation.

While the middle class has been caught in an economic vise, the financial industry that was supposed to serve them has prospered at their expense. Consumer banking -- selling debt to middle class families -- has been a gold mine. Boring banking has given way to creative banking, and the industry has generated tens of billions of dollars annually in fees made possible by deceptive and dangerous terms buried in the fine print of opaque, incomprehensible, and largely unregulated contracts. And when various forms of this creative banking triggered economic crisis, the banks went to Washington for a handout. All the while, top executives kept their jobs and retained their bonuses. Even though the tax dollars that supported the bailout came largely from middle class families -- from people already working hard to make ends meet -- the beneficiaries of those tax dollars are now lobbying Congress to preserve the rules that had let those huge banks feast off the middle class.

Today, one in five Americans is unemployed, underemployed or just plain out of work. One in nine families can't make the minimum payment on their credit cards. One in eight mortgages is in default or foreclosure. One in eight Americans is on food stamps. More than 120,000 families are filing for bankruptcy every month.

Can you imagine an America without a strong middle class? If you can, would it still be America as we know it?

it's time to steal from the rich

Financial Literacy for Everyone

The president has packed his economic team with Wall Street insiders intent on turning the bailout into an all-out giveaway. By Matt Taibbi

"What's taken place in the year since Obama won the presidency has turned out to be one of the most dramatic political about-faces in our history. Elected in the midst of a crushing economic crisis brought on by a decade of orgiastic deregulation and unchecked greed, Obama had a clear mandate to rein in Wall Street and remake the entire structure of the American economy. What he did instead was ship even his most marginally progressive campaign advisers off to various bureaucratic Siberias, while packing the key economic positions in his White House with the very people who caused the crisis in the first place. This new team of bubble-fattened ex-bankers and laissez-faire intellectuals then proceeded to sell us all out, instituting a massive, trickle-up bailout and systematically gutting regulatory reform from the inside."

The controversial Matt Taibbi December 2009 Rolling Stone article.

Tips on credit cards AND travel insurance

Suggests getting a Capital One card.

But why pay any fees at all? To keep from handing banks money unnecessarily (isn’t the bailout enough?), I also keep a money market account at Capital One Direct Banking, which charges nothing (and earns me No Hassle rewards points). I linked this Capital One online account to transfer money regularly from my Bank of America account. The transfers can take awhile — up to a week — so I always make sure to get that under way well in advance.

v

"Con artists have a word for the inability of their victims to accept that they've been scammed. They call it the 'True Believer Syndrome'. That's sort of where we are, in a state of nagging disbelief about the real problem on Wall Street. It isn't so much that we have inadequate rules or incompetent regulators, although both of these things are certainly true. [..] Instead of liquidating and prosecuting the insolvent institutions that took us all down with them in a giant Ponzi scheme, we have showered them with money and guarantees and all sorts of other enabling gestures."

dissecting wall street as a series of cons

Still, the trick for Goldman was: how to collect the insurance money. As AIG headed into a tailspin that fateful summer of 2008, it looked like the beleaguered firm wasn't going to have the money to pay off the bogus insurance. So Goldman and other banks began demanding that AIG provide them with cash collateral. In the 15 months leading up to the collapse of AIG, Goldman received $5.9 billion in collateral. Société Générale, a bank holding lots of mortgage-backed crap originally underwritten by Goldman, received $5.5 billion. These collateral demands squeezing AIG from two sides were the "Swoop and Squat" that ultimately crashed the firm. "It put the company into a liquidity crisis," says Eric Dinallo, who was intimately involved in the AIG bailout as head of the New York State Insurance Department.

Matt Taibbi gets very angry at Wall Street again; I'm not sure how fair some of it is, but it's entertaining stuff.

The unfolding debt drama in Russia, Ukraine, and the EU states of Eastern Europe has reached acute danger point.

EMU - european monetary union

"There are accidents waiting to happen across the region, but the EU institutions don't have any framework for dealing with this. The day they decide not to save one of these one countries will be the trigger for a massive crisis with contagion spreading into the EU."

Brazil lost 650K jobs in 1 mo - Jan apparently??? how

this is the "shotgun over the mantle" of the financial debacle we are living through -- those few with a sense of history or drama KNEW it would be fired before the play ends... and here we are

Phil Gramm

news of the repeal of the steal-glass act

The decision to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 provoked dire warnings from a handful of dissenters that the deregulation of Wall Street would someday wreak havoc on the nation's financial system. -- boy did it ever!

Ground zero for the financial crisis. 1999.

The Obama administration is now completely wedded to the idea that there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the financial system — that what we’re facing is the equivalent of a run on an essentially sound bank.

The Obama administration is now completely wedded to the idea that there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the financial system — that what we’re facing is the equivalent of a run on an essentially sound bank. As Tim Duy put it, there are no bad assets, only misunderstood assets. And if we get investors to understand that toxic waste is really, truly worth much more than anyone is willing to pay for it, all our problems will be solved.

We should just let the banks and institutions that have been poorly managed fail.

To this end the plan proposes to create funds in which private investors put in a small amount of their own money, and in return get large, non-recourse loans from the taxpayer, with which to buy bad — I mean misunderstood — assets. This is supposed to lead to fair prices because the funds will engage in competitive bidding. But it’s immediately obvious, if you think about it, that these funds will have skewed incentives. In effect, Treasury will be creating — deliberately! — the functional equivalent of Texas S&Ls in the 1980s: financial operations with very little capital but lots of government-guaranteed liabilities. For the private investors, this is an open invitation to play heads I win, tails the taxpayers lose. So sure, these investors will be ready to pay high prices for toxic waste. After all, the stuff might be worth something; and if it isn’t, that’s someone else’s problem.

Krugman talks about structural problems that make Geithner's plan highly unlikely to work, and msot definitely transfers all risk upon the tax payer http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/23/opinion/23krugman.html

Krugman analyzes The Geithner plan

In effect, Treasury will be creating — deliberately! — the functional equivalent of Texas S&Ls in the 1980s: financial operations with very little capital but lots of government-guaranteed liabilities. For the private investors, this is an open invitation to play heads I win, tails the taxpayers lose.

This plan will produce big gains for banks that didn’t actually need any help; it will, however, do little to reassure the public about banks that are seriously undercapitalized. And I fear that when the plan fails, as it almost surely will, the administration will have shot its bolt: it won’t be able to come back to Congress for a plan that might actually work.

Whilst bank cards along with money cards may appear virtually the exact same, its not all plastic may be the identical.

Although charge cards and money cards may well look almost the exact same, not all plastic will be the exact same.

Although bank cards along with money handmade cards could appear practically identical, its not all plastic will be the exact same.

Whilst charge cards along with debit handmade cards could glimpse almost identical, not every plastic material may be the same.

Although plastic cards and also debit greeting cards could glimpse nearly the same, not every plastic could be the exact same.

When credit cards as well as money handmade cards might glimpse almost identical, not all plastic-type may be the identical.

When credit cards along with money handmade cards might glimpse practically similar, not all plastic material will be the same.

Whilst plastic cards along with money homemade cards may well appear practically the same, not all cheap could be the similar.

Whilst credit cards along with debit cards may well look virtually the exact same, not every plastic will be the similar.

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The Federal Reserve is refusing to identify the recipients of almost $2 trillion of emergency loans from American taxpayers or the troubled assets the central bank is accepting as collateral.

Congresspersons, after what happened in Iraq, why did you give a green light here, then get surprised that Paulson is acting like a douche?

``We need oversight,'' Paulson told lawmakers. ``We need protection. We need transparency. I want it. We all want it.''

The Federal Reserve is refusing to identify the recipients of almost $2 trillion of emergency loans from American taxpayers or the troubled assets the central bank is accepting as collateral

"The Federal Reserve is refusing to identify the recipients of almost $2 trillion of emergency loans from American taxpayers or the troubled assets the central bank is accepting as collateral."

banktron [waupwaupwaupwaup] <-transformer noise

This comic pretty much sums up the bank bail-out of 2008.

The unprecedented expansion of the money supply could make the '70s look benign. - ARTHUR B. LAFFER

Getting a business loan in this economy can be more difficult than landing a reservation at French Laundry in Napa, California. Now try selling the loan officer on an open source hardware project where the blueprints will be given away. That's why the hardware hacking community is turning inwards to fund its ideas. Two open source hardware enthusiasts, Justin Huynh and Matt Stack, have started the Open Source Hardware Bank to fund hardware projects such as the microcontroller board pictured above.

an open source peer to peer bank, good coverage of their start

Getting a business loan in this economy can be more difficult than landing a reservation at French Laundry in Napa, California. Now try selling the loan officer on an open source hardware project where the blueprints will be given away. That's why the hardware hacking community is turning inwards to fund its ideas. Two open source hardware enthusiasts, Justin Huynh and Matt Stack, have started the Open Source Hardware Bank to fund hardware projects such as the microcontroller board pictured above.

A simpler bank that is easy to use. A bank that treats you with respect. No extraneous features. No hidden fees.

Neue Bank ???

via: http://ma.tt/2010/05/banksimple/

Aantal voorbeelden van goed ontworpen bankensites

金融系ウェブサイトのまとめ。しっかりとしたビジネスサイトのデザインの参考

海外金融系かっちりデザインサイト。まとめ。

Awesome IDEO ATM redesign documentary. Lot's of good thinking in here. Via Pablo.

RT @HashemBajwa: IDEO redesigns the ATM. Interesting video on the design process. http://futureselfservicebanking.com/

"virtual to real transitions" – quite amazing work around the future of self-service banking http://j.mp/9A75lj #ideo

Proyecto de IDEO para rediseño de cajeros automáticos del BBVA en España.