Posts Tagged ‘investment banking’
One of our most popular articles discusses repeal of Glass Steagall. Robert Reich is Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations. He also explains why our article was so popular:
The United States has had as much of Phil Gramm as we can stand. While Americans expect almost everyone to be on somebody’s payroll, we are now at a point where we wonder about two main subjects: “Who was paying Phil Gramm for stupidity?”, and “Where am I going to be working next week?”
Even as the Fed helped to stabilize the situation over the weekend, the stock market is down again on Monday morning. What is alarming from our standpoint is that CIT, Lehman, and National City Corporation all are down – by 25 to 31 percent as we write this. Liquidity questions surround Lehman after what we learned from Bear Sterns. Even JPMorgan needed help and considerations from the Fed to buy Bear Sterns for a reported $2 a share.
As the perception of a slowdown continues the perceived over-employment picture might indicate a need for layoffs. It sounds like market agitators in the oil industry where fear of a hurricane that might agitate Nigerian rebels who could… – you get the picture. Anyway, it is close enough for some. More layoffs were announced as Goldman Sachs Group Inc and Credit Suisse Group on Friday said they will cut about 2,000 job worldwide as a credit crisis puts a damper on fixed-income trading and corporate dealmaking.
Bank of America is making more changes although some may be lost in the news about BofA’s acquisition of Countrywide. Let us not overlook job losses as the bank said on Tuesday it would eliminate 650 corporate and investment banking jobs and sell its equity prime brokerage business. Bank of America will cut back operations in structured products such as mortgage and asset-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations. That’s probably a good idea since very few trust the investments completely.