Break Up the Big Banks?
Washington — Battling across Iowa ahead of the first-in-the-country vote on Monday, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are dueling on fertile populist ground: resentment against Wall Street, bailed-out big banks and a financial system seen as rigged. Their rhetoric is pungent. The contenders for the Democratic nomination are running neck-and-neck in polls before the caucuses, and the stakes are high. Sanders, the socialist independent...
Bernanke Says Prosecutions Should Have Followed Crisis
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke knows Americans have not forgiven him for the Wall Street bailout that saw greed in financial company executive suites go unpunished while regular people lost their homes, jobs and nest eggs in the financial crisis of 2008. “I can understand why they are angry,” he said. He says he is frustrated that he hasn’t been able to convince more Americans that his actions were necessary to avoid a...
A Historically Good Time To Take Out Loan
This is the best time to borrow money in recorded history. That’s right: Interest rates are lower today than they were when FDR or Napoleon or Henry VIII or Genghis Khan or Charlemagne or Julius Caesar or Alexander the Great or even Hammurabi were around. Or, if you want to put a year on it, lower than at any time since the ancient Sumerians made the first loans, payable in either silver or grain, back in 3000 B.C. That, at least, is...
Greek Crisis Could Affect U.S.
The financial crisis in Greece has upended the lives — and livelihoods — of residents of the Mediterranean nation. The shutdown of the banking system has resulted in long lines at ATMs to withdraw a daily maximum of just 60 euros, about $67. Citizens have stockpiled food and fuel, leading to empty shelves at grocery stores and crowded gas stations. Business leaders have warned that shortages of crucial medicines could be next. It is...
Immelt Set Up for Industrial Deals As GE Pivots From Finance Business
New York — Jeffrey Immelt, poised for the biggest restructuring push on his watch at General Electric, is plotting acquisitions to complement an industrial portfolio spanning jet engines to locomotives to oilfield equipment. With GE planning to sell the bulk of the GE Capital unit, Immelt said he will spend as much as $5 billion a year to expand the manufacturing units. GE’s chief executive officer is getting a start on building up...
