Home / Markets / Industries / Finance
Monday, October 06, 2008
FDIC's Bair Calls For 'smarter' Rules On Banks
Robert Schroeder
MarketWatch Pulse
WASHINGTON -- The chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. called for "smarter" regulation on banks on Monday, and said in a speech to an economics group that consumers should be assured by new, higher limits on the FDIC's deposit-insurance fund. In remarks prepared for delivery to the National Association for Business Economics, FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair also said the agency will consider an increase in insurance premiums at a meeting on Tuesday, since the FDIC's deposit insurance fund has decreased due to bank failures. "We're working hard to assure that our industry-funded reserves will be sufficient to cover projected losses from more bank failures," said Bair.
Copyright © 2008 MarketWatch, Inc.
Fox Business Video
-
-
Gene Cernan on One Small Step,...
-
Jul 17, 2009
Cernan on Importance of Moon Landing
-
-
-
CIT's Impact on Small Biz
-
Jul 17, 2009
What if CIT Fails?
-
-
-
Regulating Generic Drugs
-
Jul 17, 2009
Pharma Facing Regulatory Hurdles
-
-
-
Exclusive: Stanford Whistle Blower
-
Jul 16, 2009
Wydler on Stanford Financial Scheme
-
-
-
Congressional Grilling too Late?
-
Jul 16, 2009
Kucinich on Paulson Hearing
-
FOX Translator
No data currently available.
No data currently available.
Each Thursday at 8:30 a.m. EST, the government tells us about how many people went through one of the most unpleasant experiences of their lives: filing for unemployment help for the first time. It's essentially a survey, since state unemployment is managed by your state, not the federal government.
The report runs like clockwork, but it¿s notoriously inaccurate. For one thing, the number often has wide swings from week to week, so it's a rare event for the figures to come in exactly as economists predict. Second, it is very seasonal. Folks like school bus drivers often file claims when summer comes around, and other people get retail jobs as the holidays approach. Some economists like to use it to handicap the big monthly employment situation report, but they often do so at their statistical peril
Sometimes, weekly jobless claims make political, rather than economic, noise. If there¿s a big spike in claims, some politicians will often cite the number as a sign the economic sky is falling. But, it's important to remember what the weekly jobless numbers don't tell you: you don't know how long these folks stay unemployed, how long they've been out of work in the first place, or even if they're truly out of work and not just trying to scam the government.
Because it's so unreliable, economists usually put the past four weeks together and look at a moving average. That gives a little better picture of the overall trend, but it's still not a great indicator.
