It is unpleasant to face up to the fact that quite a few of the people who are lauded as courageous were not as brave as their PR would lead you to believe.
Read more...In China, things are not looking pretty.
Read more...Five long years have passed since the demise of the once venerable firm of Lehman Brothers. To mark the occasion, Wall Street, the United States Treasury Department, the White House, and their several political proxies and spokespersons have taken to the mass media to instruct the public in the “lessons” to be drawn from the financial crisis of 2007-09. Regrettably, we are witnessing the propagation of several self-serving falsehoods in the hope that the public can be induced to embrace them now that the immediacy of the events in question is in the past. Some of the lessons are so flagrantly false that they demand immediate correction.
Read more...I’m going to tell one on myself in the of exposing an abuse in retail banking that is likely news to you. It certainly stunned everyone that has heard my little tale so far. I’m hoping that readers who know of or have had similar experiences will pipe up in comments.
Read more...While it’s a relief to have Larry Summers out of the running for the Fed chairmanship, it’s also important not to labor under any delusions about Janet Yellen, the nominee presumptive.
Read more...A new article up at the Wall Street Journal blares, “J.P. Morgan Still Faces Criminal Investigation for ‘Whale’ Trades.” This headline is narrowly accurate and shows some refreshing tough-mindedness among regulators in how they are negotiating with JP Morgan over its London Whale trades
Read more...One of the aggravating facts of life in bureaucracies is having to contend regularly with misrepresentation. And I don’t mean faux friendly corporate bromides like “We’re here to help,” but weasely, technically accurate but substantively misleading statements. A Treasury reply to some questions from Elizabeth Warren is a classic in this genre.
Read more...By Bill Black, the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One and an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Cross posed from Benzinga
The last ditch efforts to save Larry Summers’ prospective nomination to run the Fed and the comments about his withdrawing from consideration have prompted further discussions of financial regulation. The thrust of the comments is that Summers’ big regulatory idea was that capital requirements are the key and other forms of rules are worthless because they are easy to evade.
The last ditch efforts to save Larry Summers’ prospective nomination to run the Fed and the comments about his withdrawing from consideration have prompted further discussions of financial regulation. The thrust of the comments is that Summers’ big regulatory idea was that capital requirements are the key and other forms of rules are worthless because they are easy to evade.
It’s not only not a good idea, it’s not good because capital requirements can be gamed just like other rules.
Read more...I have to confess that given the length of this panel discussion presented by Better Markets, I’ve looked only at the start, which is quite promising. Given the caliber of the participants, I’m hoping to get to it over the weekend, since it will be a departure from the bromides the MSM seems to be serving up on this anniversary of the Lehman collapse. This talk is oriented towards a discerning audience and offer more insider detail.
Read more...The Financial Times reported earlier this week (hat tip Scott) how banks are cutting the size of corporate bond trading desks and reducing the size of trading inventories, all as a result of big bad regulations. As a result, the banks would like us to know, investors might be hurt by a lack of liquidity! Horrors!
Read more...Yves here. With the fifth anniversary of the Lehman collapse nearly upon us, the financial media is awash in crisis-related retrospectives. That’s including more than a little revisionist history. Here, Bill Black corrects the record on some SEC propaganda that the New York Times saw fit to run. The idea that the SEC deemed Lehman’s Repo 105 transaction (which allowed it to hide $50 billion of liabilities, when its total balance sheet was $660 billion) to be not material is such a preposterous notion that, if anything, Black’s treatment is restrained.
Read more...If you are in NYC, this event at Columbia tomorrow is a must-see! Be there or be square!
Read more...By Nathan Tankus, a student and research assistant at the University of Ottawa. You can follow him on Twitter at @NathanTankus
Many thousands of words have been spilled explaining just how horrible Lawrence Summers is and how terrible he would be as chair of the Federal Reserve. While this is true, I don’t think enough has been said on the precise ways he would be able to influence policy in a negative way.
Read more...With media and technology becoming faster and more pervasive at a rapid clip, it shouldn’t perhaps be a big surprise to see the ease with which war-mongering news flashes come to dominate the story of the day. But maybe this should be received with an increasing dose of skepticism…
Read more...Yves here. For the last four years, we’ve been highlighting research that has found that high levels of international capital flows are strongly associated with frequent and severe financial crises. Gaius describes how more economists are endorsing this idea, and how the proposed trade deals, the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the US-EU trade agreement, will only make matters worse.
Read more...