For many months now, people have been asking why Ken Lewis still had his job as chairman and CEO of Bank of America, and for many months the answer has been “Because,” but now we have a new answer: as of last night he is only the CEO, and who knows how much longer he’ll have that gig. MORE »

You look at this little article by an anonymous TARP wife about how she has had to scale back on “important gifts and other necessities,” and comparing the modern banking class’s plight to intellectuals in Maoist China, and you think, wow, good thing the author chose to remain anonymous. Greenwich and environs have not yet managed to scrub the stink off the lawns after the last rabble uprising. MORE »

Whoops you must keep an eye on this frisky new Preznet of ours, because every time you turn your back on him he’s sneaking off to deliver another speech on the economy. So we come to this one in medias res, because that makes it more exciting and suspenseful. MORE »

• LOOK AMERICA, WE GAVE CITIBANK A PROFIT! It’s sexytime on Wall Street today, and around the world! That’s right, a Global Stock Rally. Citigroup jumped a whole 30 percent and is now worth 1.3 shits. You know why? Because they announced that they’re having the best profit outlook for any quarter in years! HMM… we have a sinking suspicion that some fuddledeedum went into that balance sheet, but meh, everyone’s rich again. BUY A HOUSE. [Bloomberg]

Oh hey it’s that mob rule and class warfare we’ve been told so much about! A SEETHING MOB of, uh, peaceful protesters who were not arrested by police visited the homes of two “financial predators” over the weekend. Financial predators are like sexual predators, only without the sex perversions. Instead, they like to lure youngsters into the backs of windowless white vans and force them to sign zero-percent down no-interest ARMs with a $400,000 balloon payment after five years. MORE »

We last heard of “Iceland” in the fall during those first exciting weeks of the Global Great Depression, when our proudly “interconnected” global economy did what it ultimately was designed to do: self-implode all at once. Since most/all of Iceland’s prosperity in the last decade was derived from a burgeoning financial sector, all of its banks immediately defaulted and were nationalized; the government raised interests rates to 18% or so to secure a do-or-die loan from the evil IMF, leading other European countries to call them losers and de-friend them, and voila: welcome to the THIRD WORLD, Iceland! Hope you remembered to pack a lunch! This was the backdrop for this week’s developments, in which every government official got cancer and resigned, and then the government *itself* resigned, and now they’re just going to let some lesbian run everything. MORE »

Barack Obama will have so many advisors telling him how to spend the nation’s billions! Let’s see, we’ve got this Geithner guy who financial types seem to like, and also the communist Larry Summers … who else? To answer these pressing questions, Obama will hold another press conference and respond to complicated financial inquiries with “I will buy you all a new puppy.” Stick with us! His magical press conference is due to commence at the top of the hour. MORE »

Here is something weird, and thank you, First Read, for pointing this out recently: the press has already found out the identity of like half of the future Obama cabinet. And yet we have no idea who’s being vetted to fill one of the most important positions of all — Treasury Secretary. What is up with that HMMM? Will it be the kindly ancient giant Paul Volcker? The stouthearted Kansan Republican Sheila Bair? The repellent NAFTA whore Larry Summers? Nobody knows — or at least, nobody’s telling! Our prediction: Ron Paul, who will unleash a “money bomb” on the United States economy in February of 2009 and then sell us to the nation of Galt’s Gulch for 50 Ameros. [Washington Post]

A thing that sucks about our nation’s current financial unpleasantness is that Congress wants to find solutions to it and Congress happens to suck. Other people who suck in this situation include Hank Paulson and “President” George Bush Jr. Barack Obama, too, for throwing himself into this situation that can only end in a sucky outcome. And lest we forget, the American auto industry — known by its appropriately sucky metonym, “Detroit” — sucks. So. Do we give car companies money for sucking or do we let a ton of workers in depressed areas lose their jobs and family health care plans? Oh, the wacky situations America finds itself in after ignoring massive problems for decades. MORE »

Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson announced a major shift today in the Troubled Asset Release Program (TARP!) — or, as the kids call it, “n00bama bailout $ocialism” — and we do not necessarily know to what the shift is. We know from what Hanky is shifting away, though, and that is the plan to buy toxic mortgage-related assets from financial institutions so as to loosen credit and save America. You may recall this instrument Hank is now abandoning: it was the whole point of the bailout, the thing Hank and his chum Ben Bernanke DEMANDED Congress pass within 20 minutes or the child would die. MORE »

So here are three major factors that contributed to our country’s world’s current financial misfortunes: prolonged periods of historically low interest rates (even negative real interest rates), the complete deregulation of such derivatives as credit default swaps, and encouragement from Washington that the inflated housing boom was nothing to worry about. It’s rare that you can pin so many large factors on one person, but, well, former Fed chief Alan Greenspan set the low interest rates, led the pressure on Congress to keep derivatives markets wholly deregulated, and was the voice from Washington that said everything was fine. MORE »