Archive for February, 2009
What happens when the country falls deeper and deeper into recession and some executives just don’t get it? As job losses continue to mount and executive bonuses come under fire John Thain seems to think he is above the fray.
We cannot blame the credit crisis on poor people any longer, as if anyone actually believed that anyway. Rating agency Moody’s said last month that it was revising upwards the expected losses on 90% of Alt-A mortgage securities. It describes the collapse as ‘unprecedented for its asset class’. These are not the subprime households who would probably have been better off without a mortgage in the first place. Alt-A borrowers tend to be middle-income earners.
The SEC claims to be awake and actually doing something. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission expects to file additional subprime-related enforcement actions and has dozens of “very active” investigations underway, an SEC official said on Friday. Will this result in questions the SEC does not want to answer? Only a few days after Washington told the SEC they “failed miserably in their mission” the SEC has a brilliant idea, if doing something is to be believed.
Whether you think it is good strategy or a huge hole in security, banks are cutting IT workers. Among the gruesome numbers to come out of the financial crisis are the ones hitting corporate IT, especially at major banks. In a recent round of cuts, 650 IT jobs will go at Credit Suisse, 500 at HSBC and up to 1,800 at Barclays. Many are also slashing their spending with contractors. Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, for example, have demanded that contractors accept a 15% cut in daily rates, while HBOS and Barclays made take-it-or-leave-it offers of 10% reductions.
According to a TIME 24/7 article this morning, “Someone who took out a subprime loan in 2003 is the “patient zero” who began the great recession.” A single borrower set off the series of events that may lead the economy into its greatest downturn since The Great Depression? Blaming the financial meltdown on one borrower is probably the most ridiculous thing I have read since mortgage lending hit the skids. I have a novel idea, “Why don’t we call the mortgage lender or the underwriter “Zero”?