SubscribeElsewhere on The Exxchange: Bailout | TARP | SEC | FDIC | Federal Reserve | Ben Bernanke | Henry Paulson |
# 1 News Source
Salon
Salon (www.salon.com) has great United States Department of the Treasury news, photos, videos and more
Monday, Sep 21
Another week, another $100 billion bake sale
This is the exact opposite of what conservative economists and politicians have been predicting all year. But it is as close as we can get to a dispassionate, nonpartisan judgment by the market as to the likely consequences of current U.S. fiscal policy. I intend to keep watching. As long as the...
Wednesday, Sep 16
Is the worst over for U.S. binge borrowing?
In terms of sheer total dollars, the U.S. government has never borrowed as much money as it has in fiscal year 2009, which ends this month: nearly $2 trillion, according to Mark Gongloff in the Wall Street Journal. Treasurys have withstood what could be the worst of the supply storm. Those expe...
Tuesday, Sep 15
Citigroup to U.S. government: Please leave
Citigroup wants the U.S. government out. The The Wall Street Journal expresses it most poetically: "Eager to shed the stigma of being a ward of the state," Citigroup is exploring ways to get the U.S. Treasury to reduce its 34 percent stake in the financial institution.
Thursday, Jul 23
U.S. to China: Our debt is better than your debt
As the U.S. Treasury prepares, once again, to auction off a record amount of securities next week to pay for the ongoing expenses of the U.S. government, chatter is, once again, swirling over whether investors will demonstrate sufficient appetite for $115 billion worth of Treasury bills, n...
Thursday, Jul 16
Shining a harsh light on hedge funds
The legislation would require firms for the first time to report their assets, leverage, off-balance sheet holdings and investments to regulators on a confidential basis, the department said today in a statement. The law would apply to hedge funds, private-equity firms and venture ca...
Monday, Jun 29
U.S. debt: Not so scary after all
But no. All three auctions witnessed strong demand from buyers -- especially so from foreign investors who already own over 50 percent of all U.S. government debt. What do you think? Does it weaken or strengthen Feldstein's argument that he chose to make his recommendation right after the U.S....
Tuesday, Jun 23
Bond market astrology is hard
If it seems like the fate of the world hangs in the balance every time the U.S. Treasury auctions off another batch of bonds, that's because it kind of does. This week, the Treasury is scheduled to offer up for sale $104 billion dollars worth of two-year, five-year, and seven-year notes. That's...
Monday, Jun 22
Goldman Sachs cleans up on the second Great Depression
The irony is that overall revenues in the banking and securities industries have fallen significantly in the last few years, but the collapse of Bear-Stearns and Lehman, along with the merger of Merrill Lynch and Bank of America, means fewer companies are dividing up the spoils.
Monday, Jun 15
Billion-dollar bond smuggling saga blows up
Pam Geller at Atlas Shrugs tells us that if the bonds are actually fake, it is without question the work of nefarious North Korean counterfeiters. But a DailyKos diarist, problem is, spawns his own ramshackle theory tying the news to purported U.S. government market manipulation and specu...
Friday, Jun 12
Yes, they had something to declare
A pair of Japanese citizens have been detained by Italian financial police in Chiasso on the Swiss-Italian border after being found with $134 billion of US bonds. A report by an Italian daily said that the two Japanese citizens were carrying 249 U.S. Treasury bonds worth $500 million and 10 K...
Friday, May 29
What's good for General Motors...
One could argue that both sides would stand to be in pretty bad shape if the U.S. government wasn't around to pump billions and billions of dollars into the enterprise to keep it a going concern, so keeping score on who is doing better out of the deal is beside the point. But I couldn't help recall...
Tuesday, May 12
Can we afford the Obama agenda?
Megan McArdle looks at last week's Treasury auction of $14 billion worth of 30-year bonds and says that "descriptions vary from 'weak' to 'horrible.'" It is true, investors did not display much appetite, so the government had to juice the yields it was offering to move the bills. As McArdle...
Thursday, Apr 23
On Chrysler, who will blink first: Treasury, or the banks?
Treasury has come back with a second offer -- 22 cents on the dollar -- leading one to wonder whether the news that a bankruptcy filing is in the works is part of a high stakes, government-versus-Wall-Street game of chicken. Don't like our offer? Be our guest and take your chances with the ban...
Thursday, Mar 5
How do you stop a devastating bank run?
But quibbling about thousands, 19, or 4 misses the point. The real question is what effect would the announcement of the likely nationalization of one or two of the big banks have on all the others. As in, say, on Monday, Treasury Secretary Geithner declares that Bank of America and Citigrou...
Thursday, Jan 22
The credit crunch loses its bite
During his confirmation hearing on Wednesday, Timothy Geithner's bottom-line defense of the controversial actions taken by the U.S. Treasury and the Fed last fall -- including the bailout of AIG and the decision to ask Congress for $700 billion -- boiled down to this: Worse stuff would ha...
Monday, Jan 12
Hank Paulson declares victory
As far as Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson is concerned, the much-maligned $700 billion bailout of the financial industry -- known to acronym fans as TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) -- is a success. Never mind the continually worsening economic conditions that most Americans face....
Thursday, Oct 16
China and the bailout: Happy to help
Two weeks ago, the Hong Kong newspaper Ming Pao Daily reported China's government had expressed interest in purchasing "at least" $200 billion worth of new U.S. Treasuries, to be issued soon by Hank Paulson and Co. in order to pay for the ballooning operating expenses of the U.S. government. Ch...
