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...The US stock markets are harboring the fond notion that the sovereign-bank debt pile-up in Europe has no real implications across the pond, no doubt out of professional participants’ hope to retain solid gains thorugh year-end bonus setting. The debt markets are saying otherwise. Credit market risk aversion typically precedes a stock market correction, but […]
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...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...By Paolo Manasse, Professor of Macroeconomics and International Economic Policy at the University of Bologna and Giulio Trigilia, Master’s student at Collegio Carlo Alberto. Cross posted from VoxEU. Is Italy the next European country to go? This column argues that the jury is still out, although the grace period will not extend beyond three years. […]
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 […]
Read more...Bloomberg provided a useful update on the 50 state attorney generals’ investigation into mortgage abuses. One key development is that the AGs are treating investors as parties whose interests need to be considered. This appears to be at odds with the approach taken by Federal regulators, who are devising and implementing exams of various sorts […]
Read more...No formal announcement yet, but some presumably well-sourced rumours about the size of the Irish bailout (EUR 85Bn), and the rate (7%, via the redoubtable Twitterer on all matters Irish @LorcanRK). While we await the budget statement, there are reasons to suspect, or hope, that the bailout, like Godot, will never come, because it’s failing […]
Read more...Felix Salmon reports on a conversation with departing assistant Treasury Secretary Michael Barr on newly-commenced reviews of the practices of bank servicers. Barr’s patter might sound convincing to the uninformed. An “11-agency, 8-week review of servicer practices, with hundreds of investigators crawling all over the banks”! Promises to hold miscreants accountable! Banks required to fix […]
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