Recession looking like depression.
OLEAN -- If you get a call from one of those telephone pollsters asking if you think the United States economy is in recession, don't worry that you're not an economist and fret over your answer for too long. If you want to venture a good guess, just say...

What would George Bailey Do? Any plan to right the housing market should put families first.
HENRY POTTER: Have you put any real pressure on these people of yours to pay those mortgages? PETER BAILEY: Times are bad, Mr. Potter. A lot of these people are out of work. POTTER: Then foreclose! BAILEY: I can't do that. These families...

Astute planners will use 'the next big thing' to cities' advantage.
What's the next big thing? The last big thing was housing, and it's over. So what's next? We may be in a real estate slump, but as California communities and planners begin mapping out their futures, it is not too early to start thinking about...

Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac uniform mortgage instruments: the forgotten benefit to homeowners.
I. INTRODUCTION Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are the giants of the home mortgage industry. Today they own or guarantee about forty percent of outstanding home mortgage debt in the United States. (1) In addition, their uniform mortgage instruments document the great majority of home mortgage loans....

Bankruptcy battle. (Letters).
David Cay Johnston's review of my book Debt's Dominion: A History of Bankruptcy Law in America ("Protection Racket," March 2002) lambastes me for neglecting both the "rich treasure of bankruptcy lore" that emerged from the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s and the legislative changes that "gutted partnership...

Principles of Islamic banking: debt versus equity financing. (Akacem: principles of Islamic banking).
It is difficult to pinpoint the start of Islamic banking, but the consensus is that it took place in Egypt in the 1960s. (2) The Egyptian experiment did not last very long, and it was not until the mid 1970s before Islamic banking started to take hold in many...

Entity Coverage.
Entity Plus, developed by The St. Paul Cos., was developed for corporate entities and individual directors as an insurance coverage option for privately held depository institutions, such as community banks, savings and loans, and credit unions. The coverage is for institutions with a maximum of $1 billion in assets....

When the banks went off the rails: a war memoir from the eighties.
A new administration is in place and one of its nagging problems will be the condition of our banking system. Although current banking news tends to the upbeat, we are still living with the consequences of a major debacle. How could there have been such massive failures of both...

Move over, Charles Keating.
Mother Teresa called him Charlie, as in, "How is my friend Charlie Keating?" That was the Calcutta matron-saint's first question to Senator Dennis DeConcini when they met. To her, Keating was the devout Catholic who had given her a $1.4 million donation. To most Americans, Charlie is a crook....

This is how scandals get started: Jean Lewis at the RTC.
Looking over old Whitewater articles, as I had occasion to do recently, can be an almost alarming experience--all those now-forgotten "revelations," all those blinking bureaucrats who were hauled briefly before us. A Time cover story from early 1994 alleged possible criminal behavior by presidential advisor George Stephanopoulos. Stephanopoulos had complained...