Credit Crunch

Advocates and economists say support for such a program misses lessons from the housing crisis.

Is Sen. Amy Klobuchar having bailout remorse? In a letter to Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson, Jr., on Thursday, Klobuchar called Paulson’s efforts a “failure” with a “massive transparency gap” and criticized Wall Street for not doing more to alleviate the credit crunch.
“I strongly believe that those financial institutions receiving federal aid through the TARP [...]

Spend some time in downtown Minneapolis and the truth starts to reveal itself: Underneath all that shiny beauty, nestled between the giant trophies of art and commerce, are holes and pockmarks — acres of empty land that promised developments that never came to pass.

Over at Second Street and Washington Avenue, a precarious chain-link fence encircles [...]

Think of this as a precursor to Molly’s Friday Financials roundup (here): Yesterday the International Monetary Fund released its semi-annual Global Financial Stability Report, and the news was fairly staggering. The IMF now estimates the losses through the housing-induced US credit crunch will come to about $1 trillion. Quoting the authors: “The events of the [...]