Martin Scorsese’s film about a boiler-room stockbroker who managed to reach the major leagues of financial services industry swindling, The Wolf of Wall Street, has garnered both strong box office sales and heated denunciations.
Read more...Simon Johnson wrote a remarkably blunt article for the Atlantic in May 2009 titled The Quiet Coup. In case you managed to miss it, it remains critically important reading. He provided an update of sorts in a New York Times column today.
Read more...Yves here. We described the funding mismatch with Chinese wealth management products during the first liquidity crunch earlier in the year, but given that most readers aren’t familiar with these structures, it’s good to have another summary as to how they work and more discussion of why they pose a risk to the Chinese economy. They are troublingly similar to structured investment vehicles, which were one of the detonators of the credit crisis in the US and UK.
Read more...Clarifying what believing in risk versus uncertainty means for how you view the role of interest rates.
Read more...Yves here. I thought this essay on money was useful in and of itself, and it also contains a useful primer on the views of major schools of thought in orthodox economics.
Read more...I highly recommend this short interview by John Authers of the Financial Times with Amar Bhidé, a professor at Tufts, in which he argues that a proper reading of Friedrich Hayek would lead to considerable skepticism about whether most of the changes in finance over the last three decades actually represent progress.
Read more...In this interminable post-crisis reality we are living, one thing has become crystal clear: regardless of the crime, senior bankers never do the time — at least not in most Western countries. One country that tried to buck this trend was Spain.
Read more...The Fed’s announcing the taper was supposed to be an earth-shaking event. But that actually sorta happened last summer when Bernanke first used the “t” word and interest and mortgage rates made an impressive upward march in a short period of time.
From my considerable remove, what was noteworthy about the Fed’s announcement yesterday is how terrified it seems to be of creating an upset.
Read more...Reader dSquib flagged a “bizarre” article by Mike Konczal in the New Republic titled, “Corporatism” is the Latest Hysterical Right-Wing Accusation: The secret history of a smear.” dSquib seemed quite perplexed that anyone would deem calling Obama a corporatist, which as we’ll demonstrate is patently true, a smear.
Read more...In my view the real purpose of the Volcker Rule is to prevent another Citigroup bailout and therefore the measure of its effectiveness is whether the rule would accomplish this.
Read more...A look at some predictions for Europe in 2014.
Read more...Nothing like being able to use something in the headlines to hide your real behavior. And even better if you can get a banking stalwart columnist to run PR for you.
Read more...An interview with Michael Hudson, a research professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City, and a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, on the Renegade Economists radio/podcast
Read more...If you are Jamie Dimon, a good deal is apparently never good enough.
Read more...Municipal bond investors, a conservative bunch who want to avoid rollercoaster rides and cliffhangers, are getting frazzled. And they’re bailing out of muni bond funds at record rate, while they still can without losing their shirts.
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