“American Casino is a powerful and shocking look at the subprime lending scandal. If you want to understand how the US financial system failed and how mortgage companies ripped off the poor, see this film.”
–Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel prize-winning economist and writer
American Casino movie trailer from Leslie and Andrew Cockburn on Vimeo.
While yesterday's US stock market close was poor, Asia and Europe didn't follow today as debt in Greece, Spain, Portugal, etc... rallied, their CDS narrowed and stocks bounced. The Greek finance minister said January tax revenues came in above expectations and that spending was below target for the month and said "that means the deficit reduction for January is well within what we have promised." The euro is rising in turn. Also helping is the story that Trichet is headed to the European Union leaders summit a day early in order to address Greece's problems even as the Greek finance...
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May 18th, 2009 at 10:09 pm
Looks like a pilot for a 6th season of The Wire.
May 18th, 2009 at 11:06 pm
I’m about as free market as they come and I hope this greedy bunch cockroaches get what’s coming to them. Decades of good public policy regarding home ownership tossed aside for EMH, financial engineering and leverage-induced profitability. This was not the function of free markets, this was a fraud perpetrated by a bunch of criminals and their willing enablers, e.g. Greenspan & Co.
May 19th, 2009 at 6:36 am
Hang ‘em. Better, borrow Madame Guillotine from the French and graphically show the population what happens to criminals who set out to destroy the system. What was done was treason, and ought to be punished as such.
The revenge of the people might be overdoing things a bit, but it would tend to make money managers, hedgies and others focus acutely on the mission.
Never gonna happen, but we can always wish….
May 19th, 2009 at 4:49 pm
bogwad,
I can’t tell you how many different times I’ve heard or read people say, “I wish we could…” or “We ought to…” At some point those people are going to start talking to each other and making more noise than they are right now. I thought things were hopeless, but I’m not so sure now. Notice, for instance, that Congress won’t give out any more TARP. Pee-PIP and other programs can get around that, of course, but it’s a good sign that Congress is drawing a line.
Plus, there’s a bunch of establishment figures (like Stiglitz, Krugman, Simon Johnson, Hoenig of the Fed and others) who are openly critical of the too-big-to-fail, give-em-a-bailout approach to all of this. And Andrew Cuomo is just itchin’ to prosecute SOME-body.
We’ll see. Keep your pitchfork sharpened, though.
May 20th, 2009 at 3:45 am
The stock market keeps going higher
dow 14000 soon according to experts
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=ajgUp7xQIn6c&refer=home