By Marshall Auerback, a fund manager and investment strategist who writes for New Deal 2.0. In 1729, Jonathan Swift wrote an essay — “A Modest Proposal” — satirically suggesting that the impoverished Irish ease their economic troubles by selling children as food for rich gentlemen and ladies. In that spirit, we would like to assist […]
Read more...asians scared sarah palin away from hawaii Angry Asian Man (hat tip Ed Harrison) A Social Worker for Pets New York Times The Most Underreported Health Reform Story Trudy Lieberman, Columbia Journalism Review Aetna Forcing 600,000-Plus To Lose Coverage In Effort To Raise Profits Huffington Post (hat tip reader John D) IRS Tells Single Mom […]
Read more...If this Wall Street Journal account is true, AIG’s general counsel should be fired for cause: Ms. Kelly, AIG’s general counsel, has been at the insurer since 2006 and was appointed vice chairman in January under former CEO Edward Liddy. Several people familiar with the matter say Ms. Kelly asked other employees to join her […]
Read more...Newsweek’s “Why is Barney Frank So Effing Mad?” is supposedly about the Congressman from Fidelity but is really about how the banksters are succeeding in neutering financial reform. One Congressional staffer has told me that everyone involved recognizes the measures don’t go far enough, but feel they can’t do much more (Congress can step out […]
Read more...Reader Andrew sent a research report by Pivot Capital Management, which makes a compelling case that the capital spending bubble in China has reached its limits. This is important in a narrow sense, since capital investment is now the largest component of Chinese growth, and in its broader ramifications, since China is seen as a […]
Read more...The Bank of International Settlements is taking a more public stand on a matter it took up with central bankers privately prior to the crisis, namely, that overly low interest rates stoke asset bubbles. Its chief economist William White had been warning against overly lax monetary policy as early as 2003: White recognized the brewing […]
Read more...Former SAC Capital Employee Details Forced Oral Sex, Hormone Use, Sodomy, And Cross Dressing Clusterstock. All they could do in mainstream movies was the pretty tame The Secretary; real life is always more lurid. Now plenty of folks on Wall Street have demanding and unusual tastes, but expecting your employee to satisfy them is very […]
Read more...By Satyajit Das, a risk consultant and author of Traders, Guns & Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives Wall Street Revalued: Imperfect Markets and Inept Central Bankers by Andrew Smithers (2009) The Road to Financial Reformation: Warnings, Consequences, Reforms by Henry Kaufman (2009) In a sense, this crisis is about values […]
Read more...The Telegraph today has a story that reveals much about what is wrong with childrearing and the investment banking industry today. A teacher at a Houston private school allegedly made some remarks about the financial crisis which were overly broad and in bad taste. Specifically, the claim is that an 11th grade teacher said: that […]
Read more...Reader Steve sent this tidbit from the Australian. Sovereign wealth funds not all that long ago were generally seen as sophisticated to at least competent. But so were university endowments, and in many cases, “sophisticated” turned out to be tantamount to “has a higher appetite for risk than most” which in a bull market can […]
Read more...By Edward Harrison This quote from President Obama comes via Brad DeLong: We’ve got a long- term structural deficit that is primarily being driven by health care costs, and our long-term entitlement programs. All right? So that’s the baseline. Now, if we can’t grow our economy, then it is going to be that much harder […]
Read more...This article originally appeared at Credit Writedowns. Note: Since this post was published, three more banks in Georgia have failed. Read details here. Recently, I have been writing a lot about regional banks and the capital problems they have been having. This is having a direct impact on lending capacity available to small and medium […]
Read more...By Edward Harrison of Credit Writedowns. When I read Yves Smith’s recent comments on Bank of America’s repayment of its TARP funds, I couldn’t help but think of a post I wrote six months ago called "Asymmetric information and corporate governance in bank bailouts." The gist is of the post is about the same as […]
Read more...That musty smell may be the key to preserving old books Los Angeles Time (hat tip reader DoctoRx) Occupied Paris: The Sweet and the Cruel Ian Buruma, New York Review of Books The Bad Ben Bernanke Bet Paul Kedrosky Changing My Mind on Bernanke Economics of Contempt. Coming from a self-professed Team Obama stalwart, this […]
Read more...One of the motherhood and apple pie items in econ-land is that the world needs global rebalancing, which is code for China has to stop being a mercantilist and currency manipulator, and the US has to quit borrowing a ton and overconsuming (or underproducing, which is another way to frame the same problem). But once […]
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