Yearly Archives: 2013

So, Why That Mysterious $114 Billion Bank Deposits Withdrawal in Early January?

Lambert Strether writes at Corrente.

It’s with some trepidation that I post something on actual finance, but the $114 billion withdrawal story struck me as strange at the time, and then… it disappeared, as mysteriously as it had arrived. I don’t like patterns like that, or loose ends like that. So I’m putting the the mystery before the NC commentariat, in the hopes that they’ve got better answers not than I do (that would not be hard) but than the business press did in their coverage. As the great Peggy Nooonan once remarked: “It would be irresponsible not to speculate!”

Bill Black: The Handmaiden of Capitalism v. the ‘Swamp’ Denizen of Detroit William K. Black

By Bill Black, the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One and an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

Greetings from Davos! I’m actually writing this over the mid-Atlantic as I return from being a keynote speaker at the annual “Public Eye” “shame prize” awarded to Goldman Sachs for its abuses. The shame prize award was made in Davos during the World Economic Forum as a counter-WEF event. Shell also “won” a shame prize, but I spoke on Goldman Sachs, the role of epidemics of accounting control fraud, and the WEF’s anti-regulatory and pro-executive compensation policies. I explained that the anti-regulatory policies were intended to fuel the destructive regulatory “race to the bottom” and why the executive and professional compensation policies maximized the incentives to defraud. I also explained that WEF was a fraud denier. Collectively, these three WEF policies contributed to creating the intensely criminogenic environments that produce the epidemics of accounting control fraud driving our worst financial crises. Detailed written developments of these arguments can be found on our UMKC economics blog: New Economic Perspectives.

The self-described “Handmaiden to Capitalism’s” reaction to my critique of her work

Links 1/27/13

Brian Fey “Solving the Human Problem on Earth” with Permaculture in the Bosque Village

By lambert strether of Corrente

Brian Fey is creating permacultural systems for the Bosque Village, in the Mexican highlands, a really interesting project that includes an intentional community. Here he describes some of his thinking. Very little visual interest, but you can listen to this instead of NPR, if you still listen to NPR.

Jobs and Growth Are Still Linked (That Is, Okun’s Law Still Holds)

By Laurence Ball, Professor, Johns Hopkins University; Research Associate, NBER; and Visiting Scholar, IMF, Daniel Leigh, Economist at the Research Department of the IMF, Prakash Loungani, Senior resource manager and advisor in the IMF’s Research Department. Originally published at VoxEU.

Will recovery be jobless? A broad array of analysts, from Vox columnists to McKinsey, are arguing that Okun’s Law is broken. This column presents new research suggesting that, in fact, Okun is alive and well. When output recovers, the jobs will come back, although employment will differ across countries. There may be good reasons for the structural reforms that many propose as a way to boost job creation, but undertaking them in the belief that Okun’s Law has broken down should not be one of them.

Links Australia Day 2013

Bill Black: Why the World Economic Forum and Goldman Sachs are Capitalism’s Worst Enemies

Bill Black discusses the basis for giving the “Private Eye” award to Goldman at the counter World Economic Forum gathering at Davos .

Appeals Court Ruling May Nullify Consumer Finance Protection Bureau Rulemakings

A ruling by the Washington, DC federal appeals court in Noel Canning v. NLRB pretty much ends the ability of presidents to make recess appointments, a measure that has been used since 1867. The suit successfully challenged a NLRB rulemaking on the grounds that three of the five directors were recess appointments which meant the NLRB lacked a quorum to give it authority to act.

Links 1/25/13

Richard Koo Debunks the “Deleveraging is Almost Done, American Consumer Getting Ready for Good Times” Meme

Richard Koo of Nomura published an important piece earlier this week which got some attention in the financial blogosphere (Clusterstock, FT Alphaville). It takes issue with a critical part of the economist optimists’ case, namely, that consumer deleveraging is about done and therefore the economy is likely to perform much better in the next few years.

German Hope, French Despair

By Delusional Economics, who is determined to cleanse the daily flow of vested interests propaganda to produce a balanced counterpoint. Cross posted from MacroBusiness.

Eurozone Flash PMI for January came out overnight and the news was relatively good overall, although it must be noted that contraction continues across the zone.

Ian Fraser: Something Sinister About the Lack of Prosecutions at Lehman Brothers

By Ian Fraser, a financial journalist who blogs at his web site and at qfinance. .

This is the first interview that Chicago lawyer Anton Valukas has given since the publication of his 2,292 page report into the bankrutpcy of Lehman Brothers on March 11th, 2010. At that time, Valukas found strong evidence of financial and accounting fraud designed to deceive investors at the defunct New York-based investment bank. Valukas is surprised, especially given Lehman Brothers’ rampant abuse of Repo 105 to disguise its precarious financial position in the quarters ahead of its September 2008 collapse, that the former Lehman Brothers’ chief executive Dick Fuld or any other Lehman Brothers’ director has been charged with fraud or related offences.

Links 1/24/13

The Garrulous Insolence of Simon Thompson and Anthony Browne

A pair of idiots testing the patience of the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards