Author Archives: Yves Smith

How the Republican Campaign to Gut Dodd Frank is a Huge Gimmie to Banks and Private Equity Funds

The Republicans have been quick and shameless in using their control of both houses to try to crank up the financial services pork machine into overtime operation. The Democrats at least try to meter out their give-aways over time.

Their plan, as outlined in an important post by Simon Johnson, is to take apart Dodd Frank by dismantling key parts of it under the rubric of “clarifications” or “improvements” and to focus on technical issues that they believe to be over the general public’s head and therefore unlikely to attract interest, much the less ire. However, as Elizabeth Warren demonstrated in the fight last month over the so-called swaps pushout rule, it is possible to reduce many of these issues to their essential element, which is that Wall Street is getting yet another subsidy or back-door bailout.

Today’s example is HR 37, with the Orwellian label “Promoting Job Creation and Reducing Small Business Burdens Act”.

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Fed Holds Fire on Disinflation Threat

Yves here. This post will not doubt give readers some grist to chew on in the ongoing debate as to whether the Fed is a very very clever bank stooge or not all that smart (and therefore a bumbling bank stooge, by virtue of cognitive capture). This discussion of the Fed’s blindness on disinflation, when commodities prices have fallen, oil is continuing its downward slide, and Europe has tipped into deflation, strongly suggests that the Fed is so desperately in need of believing in its own virtue that it will ignore any contrary evidence. That refusal to look at reality and to learn, particularly after how the central bank’s past ideologically-driven policies helped drive the global economy into the ditch, is a form of stupidity that seems to be drummed into orthodox economists.

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Why Grexit Would Not Help Greece

Yves here. While readers may take issue with an economist who comes originally from the Troika, I’ve seen other credible analyses come to similar conclusions: that the structure of the Greek economy and its output mix means that it would not benefit anywhere near as much as one would expect from a large fall in […]

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Welcome to the Hunger Games, Brought to You by Mainstream Economics

As a virulent strain of austerity capitalism takes over Europe, leaving shattered lives in its shadow, researchers Servaas Storm and C.W.M. Naastepad, Senior Lecturers in Economics at Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands, consider how things got so bad, what role economists and misguided policy-makers have played, and which models and ideas are needed to change course. In the following interview, they discuss how most are getting the story about Europe wrong. They explain how their research shows that when countries try to compete with each other by lowering wages and slashing the social safety net, the costs are high both economically and socially, and why co-operative and regulated capitalism is a far better path.

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Private Equity Miscreant Freeman Spogli Illustrates Investor and SEC Cowardice

Gretchen Morgenson of the New York Times released an important story over the holiday period on how a mid-sized private equity firm, Freeman Spogli, with $4 billion under management, was found to have made serious violations of its investment agreement. The SEC’s fund examination unit stated that Freeman Spogli, in two of its older funds, FS Equity Partners V (“FS V”)and FS Equity Partners VI (“FS VI”), looked to have repeatedly violated of fee-sharing agreements and to have operated as an unregistered broker-dealer. It asked for Freeman Spogli to make full restitution of the failure to reduce management fees and provide evidence that required reimbursements that looked to have been, um, ignored were actually made.

While Morgenson has done a fine job of presenting the facts of the case, we beg to differ with her as to some of the inferences she draws. She sees this case as a real step forward for investors. We see it as showing how loath both investors and the SEC to take serious action even in the face of clear-cut evidence of misconduct.

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