Pride Goeth Before the Fall Department -- NYT: On Wall Street, Bonuses, Not Profits, Were Real

Summary of important points of NYT report "On Wall Street, Bonuses, Not Profits, Were Real ":

Again, good federal regulatory oversight could have changed this, but the Bush administration and Republicans were intent on reducing oversight.

Read report that mostly deals with the doings at Merrill Lynch.

The reports coming out about the tricks of the banks in the good timesare almost as infuriating as the fact that they took hundreds of billions from the taxpayers like you and me, last fall and never really got back to lending, creating a dangerous economic situation.

A usenet copy of this report is here if you need it due to the Time's free registration requirements (It is best though to register at the Gray Lady.  You just click off receiving any mailings. That's a good idea anyway so that they don't dump you if you dump the emailbox you've given them.  Create a Yahoo or AOL mailbox just for registering if you are afraid a box will be filled with spam.  I can't often find complete usenet copies anymore and a lot of the stuff at the Times isn't available at IHT.   BTW, register at the Washington Post, too.)

I had a really funny feeling that giving these banks so much money was a bad idea.  Mostly they are just sitting on it.

The money should have been given back to the American people. Then anyone who wanted to make money would have had to serve us.  Of course, apparently the government got interests in the bailed out banks, and possibly the Obama administration will be able to get more cooperation from them.

tags: merril lynch  regulatory oversight  mortgage crisis  sec  bush adminsitration  bush  

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