Category: Capital markets

Microfinance, American style: Part 2, the good

27 October, 2009 (10:43) | Capital markets, Finance, Innovations, Microfinance, Regulation, Subprime, Theory, US News | No comments

By: David A. Smith
 
[Continued from yesterday's Part 1.]
 
Yesterday’s post opened the topic of payday lending as exploitive microfinance, designed not to maximize the borrower’s well-being but rather to hold that borrower on the razor’s edge of permanent default, as illustrated by this article from the Washington Post:
 
Meanwhile, big companies are muscling into a sector that [...]

Microfinance, American style: Part 1, the bad

26 October, 2009 (12:13) | Capital markets, Finance, Innovations, Microfinance, Regulation, Subprime, Theory, US News | No comments

By: David A. Smith
 
In business, does motivation matter?  Or are markets sufficiently rational that our apologias are meaningless, and we should be judged exclusively by our actions?  This philosophical question lies submerged under every new lender and loan product, for every action – extending or denying credit, charging too high a rate – can be [...]

Big, bad banks: Part 2, too bad to fund?

15 October, 2009 (10:27) | Capital markets, FHA, Global news, Subprime, US News, World Bank | No comments

By: David A. Smith
 
[Continued from yesterday's in Part 1.]
 
In yesterday’s post, we compared the public pronouncements of two enormous governmental lenders whose financial viabiltiya nd liquidity are in question: FHA in the US, from the New York Times (in plain text) and the World Bank, from the UK Telegraph (in indigo palatino).  The World Bank, [...]

Big, bad banks: Part 1, too big to fail?

14 October, 2009 (10:07) | Capital markets, FHA, Global news, Subprime, US News, World Bank | No comments

By: David A. Smith
 
Can a government bank fail? 
 

Something a little less visible than that
 
In the space of a week, that question’s surfaced about two governmental banks – FHA in the US and the World Bank – in stories in the New York Times (which I’ll excerpt in plain text) and UK Telegraph (in indigo [...]

The wrong move for all the wrong reasons

9 October, 2009 (11:36) | Banking, Capital markets, Finance, Regulation, Subprime, TARP, US News | No comments

From the so-dumb-only-a-genius-would-propose-it department comes the following tale of Washington’s incestuous and recursive path to policy change, as uncritically reported in the New York Times:
 
WASHINGTON — Tired of the government bailing out banks? Get ready for this: officials may soon ask banks to bail out the government.
 
Is this a real plan?  Or just the dog [...]