November 29, 2008

Out of the Spotlight, an Industry Copes With Crisis

By: Joe Nocera, New York Times

When you live and work in New York, it is easy to succumb to the fallacy that the financial crisis is all about us. It’s about giant, New York-based institutions failing or coming close to failing. It’s about high-stakes weekends...

November 26, 2008

The Worst Is Yet To Come: Anonymous Banker Weighs In On The Coming Credit Card Debacle

By: Joe Nocera, New York Times

A few weeks ago, I published an e-mail message sent to me from an executive who works in the banking industry — and had become disgusted by what he sees all around him. This weekend, that same banker sent me another e-mail...

November 22, 2008

Road Ahead Is Long for G.M.

By: Joe Nocera, NY Times

Is it really possible that General Motors has not yet begun drawing up contingency plans for a bankruptcy filing — as the chief executive, Rick Wagoner, told Congress this week?

November 19, 2008

What Securitization Problem? The F.D.I.C. Weighs In

By: Joe Nocera, New York Times

I got a call on Monday from Sheila Bair, the chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and Michael H. Krimminger, the F.D.I.C.’s special adviser to the chairman for policy. They had a point they wanted to make....

November 17, 2008

Facing Crisis, Congress Makes Sense

By: Joe Nocera, NY Times

Congress has an endless capacity to disappoint. A scandal erupts, and it rushes to pass legislation full of unintended consequences. Then, when no one is looking, it strips away regulations the country needs. Ideology too often...

November 16, 2008

A Safety Board for Hedge Funds

By: Joe Nocera, NY Times

Although it received almost no mention in the media, a panel of academic witnesses preceded the five hedge fund billionaires who appeared Thursday before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which is led by...

October 8, 2008

Desperate For A Lull In The Storm; Talking Business

By: The International Herald Tribune
Joe Nocera - The New York Times Media Group

Is it ever going to end? We started this week hoping for the best but bracing for the worst. The U.S. government's $700 billion bailout package had been passed into law, which offered hope of a respite from this unrelenting...

October 3, 2008

36 Critical Hours; Playing Out In Places Most People Can't See, The Credit Crisis Was Driven By Fear, Not Greed, And Shook The Financial World To Its Core

By: The International Herald Tribune
Joe Nocera - The New York Times Media Group

Andrew Ross Sorkin and Diana B. Henriques contributed reporting from New York; Edmund L. Andrews from Washington; Nelson Schwartz from Paris; and Carter Dougherty from Frankfurt.

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It was early on Wednesday, Sept. 17, when...

September 17, 2008

Lesson From Crisis? Just Ask Main Street; Talking Business

By: The International Herald Tribune
Joe Nocera - The New York Times Media Group

How can this be happening? How can it even be possible that we wake up on a Monday morning to discover that Lehman Brothers, a firm founded in 1850, a firm that survived the Great Depression and every market trauma before and...

September 6, 2008

An Executive Tries To Win On A New Field; Talking Business

By: The International Herald Tribune
Joe Nocera - The New York Times Media Group

When Arthur Blank retired from Home Depot in 2001, he was 58 years old, a powerfully built, energetic man with a young family and a billion-dollar fortune.

Twenty-two years earlier, with his friend Bernard Marcus, he had founded...