…turns out to be Trichet, this week, anyway; the bond markets are soothed. Two key comments: We have got a monetary federation. We need quasi-budget federation as well. a statement which ought to have all the Eurosceptics, and many others, chorussing “told ya”; then Mr Trichet also hinted that the ECB could extend its purchase […]
Read more...Well, I suppose one can defend the lies testimony offered by American Securitization Forum executive director Tom Deutsch before the Senate Banking Committee yesterday if one subscribes to the Through the Looking Glass theory of usage: ` When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I […]
Read more...By Matt Stoller, the former Senior Policy Advisor for Rep. Alan Grayson. His Twitter feed is @matthewstoller We probably know more about tribes in the Amazon jungle than we do about the real nature of power in the United States. Neither political science, nor history, nor economics do very well on this. Tom Ferguson, Professor […]
Read more...By Douglas K. Smith, Executive Director of The Punch Sulberger Program at Columbia School of Journalism Words matter. Or, more to the point, the meaning of words matter. Take ‘unemployment’. Notwithstanding years of persistently pointing out that which is the Bureau of Labor Statistics U3 series, severely understates real unemployment, nearly all accounts, whether in […]
Read more...We’ve been critics of bank “stress tests” from the get-go, because they were a shameless misuse of regulatory credibility as a tool to prop up bank stock and bond prices. It was in some was the inevitable result of how badly financial authorities (save some lonely but prominent figures in the UK, like Mervyn King […]
Read more...Michael Pettis, like Simon Johnson a few days ago, has tried mapping out what he thinks future scenarios for the eurozone might be, and what that means in terms of possible winners and losers. One of Pettis’ strengths is that he takes the time to be explicit about his reasoning, which gives readers the opportunity […]
Read more...We’ve had a series of posts (see here, here, and here) on the judge’s decision in a case called Kemp c. Countrywide, which provided what appeared to be the first official confirmation of what we’ve long suspected and described on this blog: that as of a certain point in time post 2002, mortgage originators and […]
Read more...As much as I’ve seen a lot of financial services industry misconduct at close range, sometimes even a cynic like me is not prepared for how bad things can be. And mortgage abuse is turning out to be one of those areas. I’ve been in contact for over the last six months with attorneys involved […]
Read more...By Marshall Auerback, a hedge fund manager and portfolio strategist who writes for New Deal 2.0. Despite a blame-a-thon on Ireleand, Germans banks are really at the core of the eurozone catastrophe. Much ink has been spilled in the press over the Irish problem and the laxity of the country’s southern Mediterranean counterparts in contrast […]
Read more...On the one hand, I’m being proven somewhat wrong in my dismissive views of the impact of Dodd-Frank. Credit default swaps, a product I’ve viewed as essential to rein in (it’s a fee machine for Wall Street that has produced clear harm and has almost no socially productive uses) have fallen markedly in volume prior […]
Read more...By Richard Alford, a former economist at the New York Fed. 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 YouTube video “Quantitative Easing Explained” has surpassed 2.9 million views. The video is both entertaining and unremittingly critical […]
Read more...Yves here. While Quinn has a deliberately (some might say overly) provocative style and I quibble with some of his supporting arguments, his overarching observation, that America is wedded to an economic model past its sell by date, and that model has damaging social and political consequences, is one I believe will resonate with many […]
Read more...From the look of it, the Irish bailout is taking another chunk of another one of FT Alphaville stalwart Neil Hume’s weekends. From Peston European finance ministers are struggling to reach agreement on the interest rate to be paid by Ireland for the €85bn of rescue finance it is set to receive from the EU […]
Read more...John Authers of the Financial Times provides an update on corporate cash-hoarding. In brief, it’s getting worse due to probably-warranted executive nervousness about business prospects. As Authers puts it: Corporate chieftains the world over have lots of cash, and want to hold on to it. It is a critical symptom of a new Age of […]
Read more...Time to count up the systemic implications of the Irish crisis, following up on some of today’s links and other news. First, the usual contagion to Portugal and Spain is now in full swing, propelled by another barrage of bumbling Euroannouncements: Weber announced that if necessary, the EU would increase the ceiling of the EFSF […]
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