Is Birdemic worst film ever made? BBC. Dunno, Incubus might give it a run for its money.
BOB, America’s Biggest Sodium Sulfur Battery, Powers a Texas Town Inhabitat
Fixing Reality with Online Games h+ (hat tip reader Sugar Hush)
Federal Reserve Gets Political, Sends Congress Veiled Message Huffington Post (hat tip reader Carrick)
Geithner Tests G-20 Power With Push for Firmer Yuan Bloomberg
The “indispensable” help received by Goldman John Gapper, Financial Times
How you can benefit with the dollar at par Globe and Mail. I bought the loonie well, but sold it too early.
Geithner urges EU fund rules rethink Financial Times. As reader Swedish Lex put it, “Timmy has again found some time to write to Europeans as to how they should regulate Europe.”
From “The It’s Different This Time” Desk: Avg Vancouver Home Price Hits $1m Paul Kedrosky. Eeek!
JP Morgan, I put a spell on you Tracy Alloway, FT Alphaville
Martin Wolf’s Exchange Financial Times. Today’s topic is Austrian economics.
Antidote du jour:
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I have been watching with absolute incredulity as the CAD has reached par. I mean, I have been scalping it too, but who would ever have thought it would puncture evens and stay! We’ll see what tomorrow brings.
what the heck, i liked incubus.
maybe it’s a guy thing
dunno what birdmedic is though, no link.
Re: Geithner Tests G-20 Power With Push for Firmer Yuan
Hopefully Geithner will put some real effort into it and not do another “gee folks, I did ask” effort. Interesting that France and S. Korea are complaining. It’s what I’ve been saying for a long time – the US isn’t the only country getting screwed by Chinese currency manipulation, and hence we’ve got lots of potential allies. Of course that’s an obvious point, which is why it annoys me even more when it’s presented as strictly a US-China bilateral issue.
Watching the Greenspan at FCIC?
Pretty entertaining. In a new window here:
http://www.c-span.org/flvPop.aspx?src=cspan2&live=C&pop=Y&remote=N
Greenspan is pretty testy.
Question about “mechanics” just brought up at FCIC hearing:
Citigroup kept the “AAA+” CDO’s on their trading book, that were built on BBB MBS – because the leverage was essentially 700-800 : 1 not necessarily because they could not sell them.
Georgiou is questioning Greenspan about CDSs.
No ya got it all wrong. Worst movies Plan Nine from Outer Space, Ishtar, Ed Wood, Quest for Fire. Sarah Palin’s life story…..
Is there an antidote for one’s addiction to antidotes du jour?
> Martin Wolf’s (…) topic is Austrian economics.
I’m not an economist but have read many economic blogs in the last four years, some of them who claimed to follow Austrian economics, especially Mish Shedlok. Was it due to their Austrian premises that they were largely correct about what to expect, or was it a crap shot? Martin Wolf correctly points out that neoclassical economics failed to predict anything close to what happened – what could take its place as the dominant economic view? Just a modified classical view, or something much more different?
Steve Keen please. http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/
One of the few places where I agree with the Austrians is that excessive levels of debt lead to serious crashes. They were right there, and they were also at least partly right about a central bank’s bad policies of artificially low interest rates leading to that excessive debt.
After that their assertions are far more suspect. For instance they think the answer to bad central bank policy is no central bank. We tried that in the US for a long time (end of the 2nd Bank of the US to creation of the Fed) and we still had lots of debt bubbles. Also they reject the value of lending and bank regulation, which may have been even more important that the rates.
So they’re right to crow about this crisis being a triumph for (some aspects of) their school of thought, but history shows their prescriptions don’t work.
joe’s congressperson is a republican;
mary’s congressperson is a democrat;
joe’s congressman steals from mary;
mary’s congressman steals from joe;
mary & joe get robbed;
joe hates the democrats;
mary hates the republicans;
both congressman get re-elected to life terms;
joe and mary are stupefied.
etc.
etc.
americans are supposed to hate persians
persians are supposed to hate americans
etc.
etc.
israelis are supposed to hate arabs
arabs are supposed to hate israelis
etc.
etc.
fear-based, something-for-nothing debt explodes
etc.
cartels
oil
trickle down economics
etc.
Mary & Joe go broke, hire another set of politicians, get divorced
etc.
etc.
entitlements cannot be paid
promises are lies
the best thief wins
trust is lost
the economy is bankrupt
wow. never saw that coming.
is there a boatload of kids out there, with lots of skills, that we can work as slaves?
No? OK, let’s have a VAT tax so the nexus can really crawl up everyone’s —.
“The King saves us from immediate death by hanging, for slow death by slavery. Fate is entirely uncertain.”
Funny on a couple of levels, but Minyanville’s “regulatory risk” theme is starting to come together:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/07/house-republican-book-clu_n_528385.html
Assuming (I know) the finance regulation gets some teeth, can anyone realistically oppose it?
Boehner’s (paraphrasing) “stand up to those punk staffers” speech seems like a lost opportunity for the Republicans, unless they are just making a play for Wall Street lobbying money?
One little piggy says, “bacon is bad for you.”
Spare a couple of minutes for a vid?
“Pixels” DocteurPipi
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcXtT3rZcqg&feature=player_embedded
Whether or not China actually can transition from an export-dependent economy to a domestic demand driven economy is extremely crucial.
The Japanese failed completely at this and I don’t think the other East Asian exporters have done much better.
Also, if rather than shift to domestic demand, China mostly moves up the scale in the composition of its exports, it will probably run into increased resistance from the rest of the world.