There is a thinly veiled conundrum surrounding the new Public-Private Partnership Investment Program (PIPP) created by Treasury to help get toxic mortgage assets off the books of banks. Who will be the ultimate owners?

We've heard the bellows of those you know best, "Sell 'em! Get 'em off the...

As Americans are shaking their fists in the air over the payout of AIG bonuses, the Obama Administration took the nauseating position that it was unable to prevent the payment of bonuses and is unwilling to assume the legal risk of taking the money back. Wall Street plays hard ball...

Satan's little helpers are alive and well. Their names are Greed and Avarice and their sins have proven deadly. Every financial institution sucked into the vortex of the economic crisis walked precisely the same road - they put unchecked and unadulterated greed ahead the interests of depositors, shareholders and the...

On November 7th, Bloomberg News filed a federal lawsuit claiming that the Federal Reserve Bank has refused to identify the banks that received almost $2 trillion in emergency loans as well as the assets it accepts as collateral. With virtually no oversight, the Fed is quietly lending far more than...

The Lawyer's Foreclosure Intervention Network (LFIN), the brainchild of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and sponsored jointly with the New York City Bar Justice Center, is a volunteer program for attorneys to represent the most desperate homeowners facing foreclosure.

Along with the hundreds of lawyers who have volunteered...

I watched the countdown to the Bailout vote last Friday, as I stood in a pizza joint. When it became clear it would pass, I actually had tears in my eyes. While I saw our economic future fade into oblivion, no one in the pizza place seemed to notice what...

One of the commenters on my recent blog asked me to submit the bailout proposal I had described to "EVERY SENATOR AND CONGRESSMAN politely requesting that the showmanship, red herring concessions and false outrage end."

Morpheus008 has a fair point. Since the stress level is running high for...

Was it any accident that David Blaine was hanging upside down with the blood rushing to his head in a life threatening "death dive" when John McCain decided to "suspend" his campaign? My guess is McCain was watching the news about David Blaine's latest stunt and decided to try his...

Questions every American should ask about the economic free-fall of our nation

While the Federal Reserve pumps billions of dollars into ailing financial institutions with the hope of rescuing the economy, Wall Street is engaged in a wave of dumping stocks causing global markets to falter and sending...

The Bailout Plan for our economy must completely and transparently address the ramifications of the overall exposure to credit default swaps in the global marketplace. The global market for credit default swaps is estimated at more than $60 trillion -- twice the size of the U.S. stock market and far...

Why are Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, both government-sponsored and backed by taxpayer dollars, still publicly traded? The national discussion of the mortgage mess must consider the inherent conflict that exists when Fannie and Freddie serve two masters -- its shareholders and the American people.

Owning stock in Fannie...

A flood almost took from me the first house I ever owned. It was in Boston -- no, not New Orleans -- and I saved it with the help of guidance from the federal government and a timely SBA loan to a beleaguered, unlikely landlord.

Almost twenty years ago,...