St. Louis banker David Kemper doesn’t like some of the rhetoric he’s hearing about bank bailouts. In particular, he said this morning in a speech at Washington University’s Olin School of Business, he doeesn’t like the fact that banks have…

Whenever something goes wrong, it’s human instinct to find a scapegoat. Since things have gone terribly wrong with the economy, Time magazine is asking readers to assign blame to a lineup of 25 politicians, bankers, Wall Street moguls and others.…

John Quargnenti, the rehabber whose financing problems were a subject of a column last October, may be back in business soon thanks to a rule change at Fannie Mae. Bloomberg reports:

The company will expand its limit for investor and second- home…

Yesterday’s bankruptcy filing by Circuit City Stores was the second black mark this year for the list of companies singled out by Jim Collins in his 2001 book, “Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap, and Others Don’t.”…

While the real Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are working on a program to cut beleaguered homeowners’ mortgage bills, the St. Louis Blues have invoked the firms’ names in announcing a “bailout” promotion of their own.  As part of a…

Of all the emergency financial measures announced over the last 24 hours, the SEC’s ban on short selling of financial stocks is the least likely to have the desired effect.

Consider, for example, some of the research that’s been done on…

Bill Poole, former president of the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank, is worried that all kinds of companies will seek Federal Reserve financing now that the central bank has made liquidity available to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Real Time Economics…

Bloomberg has a story today on one of the more salutary effects of the government’s takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: The mortgage giants have had to shut down their lobbying efforts. The two companies spent $7.4 million on lobbying…