Author Archives: Yves Smith
Independent Foreclosure Review Fiasco: OCC and Fed Decided Not to Find Harm
The last few days have had more and more ugly revelations emerge about the botched OCC and Fed Independent Foreclosure Review settlement, with some particularly important ones coming out of the hearings in Robert Menendez’s Senate Banking subcommittee today.
Read more...What Drives US North Korea Policy?
This Real News Network interview with Peter Lee, an Asia Times Online columnist who has been covering China for 30 year, is a welcome antidote to some of the superficial, stereotype-laden coverage of North Korea, not just what its posturing means for the US but other major players in East Asia.
Read more...War on Whistleblowers: How the Obama Administration Destroyed Thomas Drake For Exposing Government Waste
By Marcy Wheeler. Cross posted from Alternet
When Thomas Drake, then an official at the National Security Agency, realized that the agency’s decision to shut down an internal data analysis program and instead outsource the project to a private contractor provided the government with less effective analysis at much higher cost, he tried to do something about it. Drake’s decision to join three other whistleblowers in asking the agency’s inspector general to investigate ultimately made him the target of a leak investigation that tore his life apart.
Read more...Was “Cigarette-Money” in World War II POW Camps a Case of Commodity Money Origination?
By Matthew Berg. Cross posted from New Economic Perspectives
1. A Parable About the Origin of Money
Perhaps the most convincing single example cited by proponents of the view that money is a commodity is the well-known use of cigarettes as “money” by Allied prisoners of war in Germany during World War II.
Read more...Links 4/17/13
Vice Chairman of Chinese Accounting Association Warns Chinese Local Debt Could Create Bigger Crisis than US Housing Implosion
More Washington Sleaze: Lobbyist Tip Stoked Health Care Stock Jump
Yesterday, we featured an important article by Noam Scheiber on how Obama insiders cash out on their connections once they leave the fold. Today, in the Wall Street Journal, we read of the Congressional version in terms of how a tip by a lobbyist (and former Congressional aide) connected to an investment research firm led to a Congressional decision being leaked to investors before it was announced officially.
Read more...Linchpin Pro-Austerity Paper Rife with Errors; Recomputed Results Show No Growth Hit from High Government Debt
There appears to be no intellectually honest defense of austerity left standing.
Read more...Links 4/16/13
Richard Alford: Has the Household Sector Delevered?
By Richard Alford, a former New York Fed economist. Since then, he has worked in the financial industry as a trading floor economist and strategist on both the sell side and the buy side.
The post raises three questions. How has the risk appetite of the household sector, as reflected in the leverage ratio and the asset mix, changed over time? Does it appear as if the household sector has completed the rebuilding of its balance sheet? What are the implications, if any, if the deleveraging of the household sector balance sheet is incomplete?
Read more...Obama: The Buckraking Starts Here
It has become depressingly normal to hear of senior Administration officials going immediately for the golden ring when they leave public service. But for every Mary Shapiro joining Promontory and Lanny Breuer returning to Covington & Burling for $4 million a year, there are even more operatives at similar or lower levels who make a very juicy return on their association with Obama but don’t get the same level of attention in the mainstream media.
Norm Scheiber, in a must-read article in The New Republic, “Get Rich or Deny Trying:
How to make millions off Obama,” chronicles how this process works. It’s even uglier than you might imagine.
Here’s How the Foreclosure Reviews Could Have Been Done Much Faster and Cheaper
Yves here. The OCC made the not-surprising confession in Senate hearings last week that if it had to do them all over again, it would have handled them differently.
On the assumption that the OCC is sincere in its repentance, Michael Olenick offers one way to have executed the reviews at vastly lower cost than the botched process that resulted.
Read more...Gold Crash Signals End but End of What?
Whither gold?
Read more...
