One could ask the question: how did the financial system got us into such a mess? First one has to look at the value of anything and nothing… On average:
moyers: welcome to the journal . with all due respect, we can only wish those tea party activists who gathered this week were not so single-minded about just who s responsible for their troubles, real and imagined. they re up in arms, so to speak, against big government, especially the obama administration. but if they thought this through, they d be joining forces with other grassroots americans who will soon be demonstrating in washington and elsewhere against high finance, taking on wall street and the country s biggest banks. the original tea party, remember, wasn t directed just against the british redcoats. colonial patriots also took aim at the east india company. that was the joint-stock enterprise originally chartered by the first queen elizabeth. over the years, the government granted them special rights and privileges, which the owners turned into a monopoly over trade, including tea. it may seem a stretch from tea to credit default swaps, but the principle is t
moyers: welcome to the journal . with all due respect, we can only wish those tea party activists who gathered this week were not so single-minded about just who s responsible for their troubles, real and imagined. they re up in arms, so to speak, against big government, especially the obama administration. but if they thought this through, they d be joining forces with other grassroots americans who will soon be demonstrating in washington and elsewhere against high finance, taking on wall street and the country s biggest banks. the original tea party, remember, wasn t directed just against the british redcoats. colonial patriots also took aim at the east india company. that was the joint-stock enterprise originally chartered by the first queen elizabeth. over the years, the government granted them special rights and privileges, which the owners turned into a monopoly over trade, including tea. it may seem a stretch from tea to credit default swaps, but the principle is t
said to be running for a future role as a strategist. new york times, in the years before its collapse, we told you about this story, lehman used a small company to shift investments off its books. the firm called hudson castle played a crucial behind the scenes role and raises new questions about how far lehman went to obscure its financial condition. i wonder if there were crimes committed. the l.a. times, executives knowingly created a mortgage time bomb. the bank made its loans that it knew were bad and then packaged them into risky securities. former washington mutual executives testifying on capitol hill today. how about the wall street journal, some good economic news. the dow back at 11,000 for the first time in 19 months. you know, they announced pulitzers yesterday in. they did? did you hear, kathleen parker. yes.
the report claims the, quote, alter-ego was called hudson castle and was used to obscure lehman s financial condition before the company went bankrupt. andrew, what does this mean? this is an important story and it s an important story because it s not just about lehman brothers. it s actually about much of wall street. the stories have been dribbling out over the past couple weeks. there s a real issue as to what these banks are reporting at the end of every quarter. meaning are the numbers accurate? and what you re really finding more and more and we heard about this, by the way, during the tech bubble where companies at the end of the quarter would try to get rid of stuff to make their balance sheets look pretty and then put the stuff back on their balance sheets two days later. and that s what we re finding happened to lehman brothers. frankly, i think there s a larger worry that this is happening at the goldmans, morgans, j pchpmorgans across t board. there was an article la