After all of the boisterous noise about rejecting austerity, Greece has finally agreed to the outlines of a bailout to address its debt crisis: more austerity. Its future is grim(mer). At times like this, it is useful to ask which side has the morality, and which has only the hazards.
Citing dismal conditions at Rikers Island and a 16-year-old who committed suicide after he was jailed without charges for three years, the city of New York announced Wednesday plans to eliminate bail requirements for non-violent and low-level offenders.
After exit polls showed left-wing coalition Syriza handily winning Greece's parliamentary election on Sunday, a senior minister with the country's ruling center-right party publicly admitted defeat, the Associated Press reports.
Damon Silvers, an AFL-CIO official, sat on a congressional panel in 2008 that oversaw the bank bailout. "If I'd known what the consequences of the decision not to restructure the banks would be," he now says, "I would've set myself on fire on the Mall."
Daryl Lane Woods, chairman of Missouri's Main Street Bank and an idiot, has pleaded guilty to using $381K in federal bank bailout funds to buy a condo in Fort Myers, FL, which sucks.
Eurozone finance ministers are demanding a one-time levy on bank deposits of all sizes—even on insured accounts—as part of a bailout package for Cyprus, which is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. Cypriots sprinted to banks and ATMs this weekend, waiting in long lines to withdraw cash after hearing about the plan…
When the banks got bailed out, people were reasonably upset — why should huge corporate banks be given public money to recover from the disaster of their own greed and incompetence? Others argued that letting those banks fail would send the economy into a further tailspin. Either way, it happened, and that was that.…
A.I.G., the backbone that runs one inch beneath the surface of the global economy, has gotten itself millions of dollars worth of free PR today by just considering joining a lawsuit against the U.S. government. To sue, or not to sue? To be ungrateful bastards, or to potentially miss a payday? It's not a complicated…
Rolling Stone's Tim Dickinson has a devastating story gutting one of Mitt Romney's origin myths as a "Turnaround Guy." Romney has always taken credit for rescuing Bain & Co., the consulting firm where he got his start (as distinct from Bain Capital, the private equity operation he later co-founded) from the clutches…
Neil Barofsky was at the very center of the U.S. government's response to the 2008 economic collapse. He spent more than two years, until March of 2011, as Special Inspector General for the TARP program, overseeing and monitoring government bailout funds. Now, Barofsky has written a ferocious book detailing how, he…
Europe will apparently not fall apart after German chancellor Angela Merkel shepherded a deal early Thursday morning to write down Greek's debt. It's complicated, but basically she got a bunch of banks to take a 50% haircut on what Greece owes them. Click on the image on the right to see how one of the negotiators…
Teetering teenage titty tableau titillator American Apparel has been wrestling this week with the question of how to get millions of dollars to keep itself alive while still being run by Dov Charney, a crazy person. They've done it! How? They found the minute handful of people in North America who A) have millions of…
Fashion pimp of trendy hose American Apparel is in mortal financial peril at the moment; it needs an infusion of cash to stave off a possible bankruptcy. Investors have the cash, and the interest in the brand; what they don't have, in all likelihood, is an interest in handing a huge pile of cash over to the sole…
Like all real Americans, Texas' Republican Gov. Rick Perry hates government bailouts. He even started a petition called "No Government Bailouts"! So it's awkward that his state balanced its budget almost entirely thanks to the federal government's stimulus program.
Moody's, the global credit rating scam agency, dropped Ireland's government bond rating five notches today from "Aa2" to "Baa1," which isn't good (at all)! Greece and Spain could soon feel the Moody's hammer, too. Sucks to be them!
Remember TARP, the $700 billion bank bailout? Turns out it'll cost "only" $25 billion. That counts as a success! Hooray!
After guaranteeing its banks' debts in October 2008, Ireland announced this weekend that it applied for a multibillion-Euro bailout package from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. Don't freak out, though! The corporate tax rate won't be raised.
That $700 billion bank bailout? Looks like it'll end up costing us "only" $50 billion.
Poor Treasury secretary Tim Geithner. The lifetime government official has never worked for evil Goldman Sachs, but no one will believe him. Will he ever be able to shed this Goldman taint?
Rep. Charlie Rangel's ethics trial is officially old news, now. Why? Because we might just be getting a second House Democrat's ethics trial soon, for longtime congresswoman Maxine Waters. Why can't these busybody ethics investigators just play it cool?
