Econ4, which is a group of reform minded economists (that may sound like an oxymoron but it isn’t) is presenting a series of videos on major topics where it believes our policies are seriously out of whack. Their latest release is on housing and foreclosures. Your humble blogger is a participant.
Read more...Our states and localities are cannibalizing one another as they concoct targeted tax breaks which they use to lure corporations from their neighbors.
Read more...The depth of the financial crisis, concern about the security of other assets including once risk-free governments bonds and a fragile banking system prompted a flight to gold as a safe haven. The monetary policies of governments and central banks, emphasising low interest rates and printing money to restart the global economy, also underpinned the gold price.
For investors, investing in gold is not without problems.
Read more...Citi is a particularly blatant example of a way of operating that has become endemic in American business: when things get tough, throw as many employees as possible under the bus, and use that to maintain or even increase the pay of the top echelon.
Read more...Yves here. Philip Pilkington makes an interesting argument in this post, namely, that the method preferred among mainstream economists for managing the economy encourages investors to speculate in financial instruments rather than invest in real economy assets and projects.
Read more...CEOs talk about shared sacrifice, but the only thing they want to share is your retirement money with their wealthy friends.
Read more...By Abigail Field, a lawyer and writer. Cross posted from Reality Check
Showalter pushes the ‘it’s not the mod terms, it’s the bad borrower’ idea with far more than just a “Living Large” headline. He invents two couples, pitched as archetypes of good and evil, probably hoping to copy the policy-killing success of Harry and Louise. But this invocation of the irresponsible borrower myth is particularly egregious–both borrowers are trying to be responsible in the face of insolvency.
Read more...By Satyajit Das, derivatives expert and the author of Extreme Money: The Masters of the Universe and the Cult of Risk (2011)
In Germany, gold is now available from vending machines in airports and railway stations – Gold to Go. Shoppers can buy a 1 gram wafer of gold or a larger 10g bar. Seeking safety for their savings, individuals have purchased 150 tonnes of gold, mainly in the form of coins. Investors poured money into special funds (known as exchange traded funds (“ETFs”)) which pool investor monies to buy over 1,000 tones of gold.
Read more...As we’ve detailed in numerous posts, the performance of SEC enforcement chief Robert Khuzami has been abysmal. It was bad enough that the SEC was weak before the crisis. But the fact that the agency hasn’t upped its game in the wake of the biggest financial markets debacle in history is a colossal fail. And as we’ve pointed out, there’s good reason Khuzami has engaged in (at best) entering into settlements with banks that judge Jed Rakoff described as mere “cost of doing business” level punishments. Any serious pursuit into the conduct at the heart of the crisis would have implicated him. He was General Counsel for the Americas for Deutsche Bank, and its senior trader Greg Lippmann was patient zero of toxic CDOs, so Khuzami was directly responsible for the failure to rein him in (specifically, note that Khuzami sued Goldman over one of 27 Abacus CDOs but did not sue Deutsche over a similar Deutsche Bank CDO program called Start).
The latest revelation makes it clear that the new head of the SEC needs to replace Khuzami.
Read more...American readers may tell themselves that the failures and stresses of European banks are Europe’s problem. That’s a simplistic view. Major European banks are significant lenders in the US, particularly to corporations. And European banks also fed heavily at the trough of US rescue facilities, as did the bank in case study, Dexia.
Dexia is a classic example of a not very sophisticated bank deciding to get into the big leagues and coming to ruin.
Read more...By Abigail Field, an attorney and writer. Cross posted from Reality Check
Friday HousingWire ran a six-and-a-half page big bank/mortgage servicer propaganda piece called “Living Large“, by Tom Showalter. The article, subtitled “A person’s lifestyle plays into whether they will pay their mortgage after a loan modification”, purports to explain why people default on loan modifications. Instead, it spins a bank-exonerating morality play not justified by the data supposedly being interpreted.
Read more...During the off-hours on Sunday, when few people were willing to ruin whatever remained of their weekend and when even astute observers weren’t supposed to pay attention, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners approved new rules that would allow life insurance companies to lower their reserves for future claims—at the worst possible time—having already forgotten all about the financial crisis.
Read more...I know, we don’t generally do optimism here at Naked Capitalism. And truth be told, I’m having trouble accepting the Financial Times’ John Dizard’s argument that things are going to get better in the Eurozone. Admittedly, John has a taste for investing on the wild side: he’s typically recommending exotic trades in his weekly column. But his argument isn’t based on catching a near-term trading bounce; it’s based on…..fundamentals.
Read more...
