Kenneth Feinberg, President Obama's “pay czar,” last week capped and restructured the salaries of top executives at seven embattled corporations that have not yet repaid the help they received from the federal government last year.
SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro could credibly claim that during her tenure as head of Finra, the group was not responsible for failing to detect the Madoff Ponzi scheme.
Judging by the recent 2009 Moss Adams/ InvestmentNews Adviser Compensation and Staffing Study, financial planning, investment advisory and independent-brokerage firms could teach companies in many other fields how to manage in tough times.
The Securities and Exchange Commission's inspector general, David Kotz, rightfully excoriated the agency for its failure to expose the Madoff scheme during its investigations of the firm.
Most financial commentators approved when President Obama two weeks ago reappointed Ben Bernanke as Federal Reserve Board chairman. However, in most of the commentaries, the approval was based on the belief that it would be unwise for the president to introduce more uncertainty into the financial markets at this critical period in the recovery.
The U.S. government must continue its efforts to crack Switzerland's bank secrecy walls. Those barriers have helped perhaps hundreds of thousands of wealthy Americans shield at least some of their income from the Internal Revenue Service.
Wall Street firms pride themselves on hiring the best and the brightest, yet they constantly do dumb things in pursuit of profits that bring the whole financial industry into disrepute.
No wonder investors have lost faith in the stock market.
The REIT industry is in the throes of a debate over how much debt is appropriate.
First, carry out the sentence. Then select the jury (preferably a dysfunctional or biased one). Finally, hold the trial and announce the verdict. That is the peculiar process that Congress and the Obama administration are following in trying to ensure that there will be no repeat of the financial crisis.
