| Treasury official was hired by Lehman
As an assistant state treasurer last year, Patrick F. Landers III negotiated terms of a $1.25 billion bond offering with Lehman Brothers that netted the investment bank millions of dollars in fees. Within four months, Landers was talking to Lehman Brothers about a job and later was hired as a senior vice president of the firm. The complex, fast-tracked bond deal was a good one for Lehman Brothers, which earned two-thirds more in fees from the state, about $4.7 million in all, than it would have earned through a typical bond offering. Lehman Brothers was awarded the work without having to compete, after Landers sought a waiver of bidding rules on the grounds that speedy action was required and that the deal was too complicated to solicit bids. Landers declined to comment.
Fraud deepens Michigan housing crisis
Danny Stokes used to sell drugs, before he discovered it was safer and more lucrative to sell mortgages. Samer Fawaz and Bashar Farraj were students in a mortgage fraud class where they learned to inflate appraisals and bilk lenders. They murdered one of their fellow con men in their Sterling Heights mortgage office when the scheme began to unravel. Nelson Sumpter served time for fraud in a scam that drew national media attention in 1994. That criminal record didn't stop him from beginning a new career as a loan officer. He was recently indicted for fraud. .
Bubble bursting?
It's not that this rate cut won't work as well as it did in 2000 - it won't work at all. It is just not that kind of recession. The issue is lack of confidence and a tonne of bad debt on the banks' books - not a lack of liquidity which is the typical issue that requires monetary easing. The banks have overstretched themselves with dubious loans, consumers have overstretched themselves with the same loans and governments have ignored the mess. Now it's getting messier, they think it's a case of pressing the Greenspan button and, hey presto, you get a buoyant economy again. Well, it's not that kind of recession and it's not going to work. The Fed and other policy-makers need to think beyond simplistic monetary easing towards fiscal stimulus instead. .
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