Banks Push to Appease Regulators With Low-Ball Damage Compensation

Staff / Truthdig May 15, 2011 Investigators at the United States Trustee Program, which oversees U.S. bankruptcy cases, are collecting mountains of evidence that show that banks industrywide are hurrying huge numbers of borrowers out of their homes prematurely, based on false loan repayment claims. (more) Dig deeper ( 2 Min. Read )

Hedge Fund Founder Found Guilty: Who’s Next?

Staff / Truthdig May 11, 2011 The founder of the Galleon Group hedge fund, Raj Rajaratnam, faces 25 years in prison after a jury convicted him on 14 charges related to a six-year insider-trading binge that netted him more than $60 million. (more) Dig deeper ( 2 Min. Read )

A British Perspective: How U.S. Universities Became Hedge Funds

Staff / Truthdig May 6, 2011 A U.K. journal offers a great primer on why our public universities—especially California's—are in such a dismal state these day. Dig deeper ( 2 Min. Read )

New England Republicans Assure Financial Reform Passage

Staff / Truthdig Jul 13, 2010 Scott Brown of Massachusetts has decided to support the anemic financial reform bill because, as The Washington Post reports, "he got nearly everything he wanted." The bill is now expected to pass with the support of at least two other Republicans, including Maine's Olympia Snowe. Dig deeper ( 2 Min. Read )

EU Moves to Cap Bank Bonuses

Staff / Truthdig Jul 1, 2010 Looks like banking executives in EU member nations will have to settle for slightly less ginormous bonuses in the coming year, once the European Parliament puts its official stamp on an agreement to limit banking bonuses and severance packages. Dig deeper ( 1 Min. Read )

Billionaire Arrested for Alleged Insider Trading

Staff / Truthdig Oct 17, 2009 Billionaire hedge fund founder Raj Rajaratnam was arrested Friday and charged with running the largest hedge fund insider-trading scheme in history. Charged with Rajaratnam, founder of Galleon Group, were executives of several prestigious U.S. companies. Dig deeper ( 1 Min. Read )

The Root of Madoff’s Evil

Robert Scheer / Truthdig Jul 1, 2009 Bernard Madoff should be exhibit A in why the dark world of totally unregulated private money managers and hedge funds should be opened to the light of systematic government supervision. Instead, he is being treated as an aberrant menace. Dig deeper ( 4 Min. Read )

Obama’s Next Target: Hedge Funds

Staff / Truthdig May 1, 2009 President Obama gave certain hedge fund manager types who held out for "an unjustified taxpayer bailout," as he put it, a dressing down in the midst of his comments about Chrysler's bankruptcy filing on Thursday. Needless to say, that didn't go over so well with the targeted demographic. Dig deeper ( 1 Min. Read )

Living Large and in Charge

Robert Scheer / Truthdig Apr 8, 2009 Not surprisingly, Lawrence Summers is convinced that he deserved every penny of the $8 million that Wall Street firms paid him last year. And why shouldn’t he be cut in on the loot from the loopholes in the toxic derivatives market that he pushed into law when he was Bill Clinton’s treasury secretary? Dig deeper ( 3 Min. Read )

Cuomo Sues Madoff’s ‘Middleman’ Over $2.4B Handoff

Staff / Truthdig Apr 7, 2009 Manhattan financier and art aficionado Ezra Merkin may pay a high price for passing some $2.4 billion of his own clients' money to Bernard Madoff, if New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has his way in the matter. Dig deeper ( 1 Min. Read )

Wall Street Showered Obama’s Top Economic Adviser With Riches

Staff / Truthdig Apr 6, 2009 Lawrence Summers is the man President Obama turns to for insight into the economy, so it's more than a little disturbing that the very financial institutions the taxpayers are now rescuing -- to the tune of nearly $3 trillion -- paid Summers almost $8 million last year. Goldman Sachs & Co., a major beneficiary of the government's largesse, paid him $135,000 for one speech. Dig deeper ( 1 Min. Read )

Soros Laughing All the Way to the Bank

Staff / Truthdig Mar 26, 2009 Not many big hitters from the financial sector have managed to stay afloat, let alone turn a profit, since the economic crisis kicked in, but George Soros has done quite well for himself. Soros made $1.1 billion last year, and he's not even at the top of the list of hedge fund managers who beat the odds in 2008. Dig deeper ( 1 Min. Read )