Author Archives: Yves Smith
SEC Official Describes Widespread Lawbreaking and Material Weakness in Controls in Private Equity Industry
At a private equity conference this week, Drew Bowden, a senior SEC official, told private equity fund managers and their investors in considerable detail about how the agency had found widespread stealing and other serious infractions in its audits of private equity firms.
Read more...No Evidence Justice Department Will Prosecute U.S. Banks Responsible for Financial Crisis
Bill Black is in particularly fine form in this Real News Network video.
Read more...Yanis Varoufakis: Virtual Worlds and the Future of Economics
Varoufakis spoke with Senior Editor Peter Suderman about what he learned as a video game economist, the failings of his chosen academic profession, and how computer games and virtual online worlds might be the future of macroeconomics.
Read more...Links 5/7/14
Americans Raid 401(k)s, Replacing Home Equity Withdrawals as Way to Make Ends Meet
It’s been creepy to see economists and the financial media cheering the re-levering by American households as a sign that they economy is on the mend and consumers are regaining their will to shop. The number of Americans who are tapping into their 401 (k) accounts is proof that the financial health of ordinary Americans is far from robust.
Read more...Wolf Richter: Hidden Leverage Threatens To Blow Up the Markets
Leverage-on-leverage vehicles were the big driver of the global financial crisis. Some investors are going back to their overly-risky ways.
Read more...Philip Pilkington: Why Economists Fail to Make ‘Rational’ Judgments and Why You Should Too
Economists flunk one of their own tests, and that says a lot about what “economics” really is about.
Read more...The Myth of the Great Moderation
This is a terrific short video on why the Great Moderation and the underlying restructuring of the economy during that period, wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
Read more...Links 5/6/14
Kentucky Investment in Blackstone Fund of Funds Shows Desperation and Cluelessness of Some Public Pension Funds
No matter how you cut it, the Kentucky Retirement System hasn’t done well with its outsized commitment to alternative investments.
Read more...Enron 2.0: Goldman-Linked Investors Set to Manipulate East Coast Electricity Prices
Remarkably, some Goldman alumni look about to re-enact Enron-style energy market price manipulation all along the East Coast. And no one appears to be alert enough to stop them.
Read more...Blackstone Unit Sued Over Slum-Like Condition of Single Family Home Rental
How Blackstone’ single family home rental business, Invitation Homes, is proving to be more slumlord than landlord.
Read more...Links 5/5/14
How Milton Friedman Fomented the Barmy “Corporations Exist to Maximize Shareholder Value” Myth
One of my pet peeves is the degree to which the notion that corporations exist only to serve the interests of shareholders is accepted as dogma and recited uncritically by the business press
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