Note: This is a news update on William K Black and his mentions in the News. It's listed in reverse chronological order since the Bill Moyers inerview.
Ryan Grimm @ Huffpo has what should be considered an unbelievable article about the Inspector General in charge of overseeing and auditing the Federal Reserve. However, given the bizarro financial world we are living in, unbelievable has lost its meaning. The look on Congressman Alan Grayson's face says it all.
About 21.8 percent of all owners were underwater as of March 31, the Seattle-based real estate data service said in a report today. At the end of the fourth quarter, 17.6 percent of homeowners owed more than their original mortgage, while 14.3 percent had negative equity three months earlier.
It's amazing to see 50% more home mortgages go underwater in just 6 months!
Property values dropped 14 percent from a year earlier in the first quarter, reducing the median value of U.S. single- family homes, condominiums and cooperatives to $182,378, Zillow said. The decline has left about 20.4 million of the U.S.’s 93 million houses, condos and co-ops with loans higher than the properties are worth.
Let me say upfront that I have no problem with private equity companies buying an interest in banks. I do have a problem with them buying up a bunch of banks and controlling them. Good private equity funds are great at identifying deals when they see them and see them with many failing banks. What they see is all upside and downside protected by taxpayers.
Private equity firms are putting the Washington money to use by pressuring the Fed, Congress and the White House to change another old banking rule that applied to bank ownership - mainly the Bank Holding Company Act. Current law prohibits mixing banks and commerce
based on a fear that if industrialists own banks, they will dominate — and try to manipulate — the economy, as they did during the early-20th-century heyday of John Pierpont Morgan.
Just another old obsolete rule - kind of like Glass-Steagall.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Bank of America has been deemed to need an additional $34 billion in capital, according to the results of a government stress test, a source familiar with the results said on Tuesday.
A Bank of America spokesman declined comment.
The amount is far higher than published reports had speculated the largest bank might need. It is certain to increase the pressure on Chief Executive Kenneth Lewis, whom shareholders ousted as chairman last week.
"In the movie Sicko, Moore lumps France in with the socialized systems of Britain, Canada, and Cuba. In fact, the French system is similar enough to the U.S. model that reforms based on France's experience might work in America. That's not to say the French have solved all health-care riddles. Like every other nation, France is wrestling with runaway health-care inflation. That has led to some hefty tax hikes, and France is now considering U.S.-style health-maintenance organization (HMO) tactics to rein in costs.
Still, some 65% of French citizens express satisfaction with their system, compared with 40% of U.S. residents. And France spends just 10.7% of its gross domestic product on health care, while the U.S. lays out 16%, more than any other nation."
I'll try again because the first Canada blog got really messed up. Sorry Robert.
Canada
Spending on health care to reach $5,170 per Canadian in 2008
November 13, 2008—Canada’s health care spending is expected to reach $171.9 billion in 2008, or $5,170 per person, according to new figures released today by the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI). This represents an increase of $10.3 billion over estimated expenditures for 2007, or a growth of 6.4%. These figures are featured in National Health Expenditure Trends, 1975 to 2008, Canada’s most comprehensive source of information tracking how dollars are spent on health care in this country.
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