Category Archives: Curiousities

Econoparody: The Cinders of Ayn Rand

The folks at Versus have released a set of holiday econoparodies. This is my favorite:

Dog Whistle Economics’ Code Words

Here are a few code words that you will often see in economic writing followed by their true meaning. The code word is a dog whistle. It acts like an emotional marker only for those attuned to the underlying ‘moral’ issues implied by the code. While you may agree with the logical framework behind the […]

ContagionEx is For You!

I’m in the middle of a serous shredding which is taking longer than I’d like. But for your viewing pleasure in the meantime, Mark Ames has found this tidbit:

IMF and ECB to offer Italy a 600 billion euro bailout (sources)

Cross-posted from Credit Writedowns There is a flurry of activity going on in Euroland this weekend. I have a number of stories up on different proposals in the offing. Clearly, European policy makers have got religion about saving the euro. Expect some kind of announcement soon. According to Austrian daily Der Standard, Italy is to […]

Bill Black: Best Satire of Faux Austrian Economics Ever

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 posted from New Economic Perspectives

Someone has created a fabulous, richly detailed parody of Austrian economics. They call it The Daily Bell and claim that its perspective reflects Austrian economics. In reality, it satirizes faux Austrian economics’ sycophancy toward elite white-collar criminals.

I was delighted to learn that they used my recent column: The Virgin Crisis: Systematically Ignoring Fraud as a Systemic Risk as the vehicle for their send-up.

More Evidence That Judges Have Had it With Banks

Today, we linked to an article in the New York Times that illustrates a considerable change in the attitude of some judges in the wake of the robosigning scandal. Before, the assumption was that of course, the bank was right and any borrower trying to block a foreclosure had better have an awfully compelling case. But a lot of judges were stunned by the level and institutionalization of bank abuses of procedure. And in a small, happy note, some of the employers of the worst foreclosure mills are finally cutting them lose. Per Michael Olenick, Fannie Mae has ceased doing business with the Baum law firm in New York (the one with the now notorious 2010 Halloween party that made fun of mortgage borrowers fighting foreclosures as future homeless people).

We first got wind of this decision below from Matt Weidner. Frankly, it reads like a parody, but we got it from April Charney, and it does have the stamps you’d see on the real deal. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it even if it is an artful fabrication, and even more if someone with access to Pacer can confirm that it is genuine.

Validated Carbon Credits and Baron Traders Limited Have (Update: Briefly) Left the Building

The FT and a scammer respond to a Carbon Credits post at NC

Cheer Up, FTAdviser: At Least You Don’t Publish Threadbare Excuses from Scammers, Like Reuters Does

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By Richard Smith

Having hooted mildly at FTAdviser yesterday, for their somewhat skimpy fact checking, I found my eye caught today by a similar miss from Reuters (in bold):

“FTAdviser” Tricked Into Lending the Good Name of the Financial Times to Carbon Credit Scammers

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Naked Capitalism: the First Five Years (Nearly)

The fifth anniversary of Naked Capitalism’s first post is due on 19th December. According to WordPress, another 8,361 posts have gone up since 2006. 7,453 of them are posted by Yves, who thus averages four posts per day, week in, week out, for all that time: unnerving. For all the generosity of Yves’s tributes to other contributors, it’s pretty obvious where the lion’s share of the engagement is coming from, though I would have to single out Ed Harrison as the most wonderful near-full-time helper when Yves is having one of those bandwidth-challenged annual “holidays”.

From direct observation, and deduction, the average Yves Smith working day, which is to say, the average Yves Smith day, splits up something like this:

Chinese bubble bursting: A probable non-event

By Philip Pilkington, a journalist and writer living in Dublin, Ireland In waking a tiger, use a long stick. – Mao Tse-tung Well, it looks like it could finally be happening. The Chinese housing bubble could well be bursting right before our eyes. The bubble has long been present for all to see, with news […]

The money scoreboard

I am going to fill in a few posts for Yves while she is away on conference. Here’s one that is a thought piece I wrote last week at Credit Writedowns. It is a mental model of the economy I am toying with based on some comments the modern monetary theory folks have made to […]

Making a mockery of sovereign CDS

What happens when you get a default that equates to a 50% loss for most investors without triggering default insurance? Massively negative unintended consequences. Europe has just made a mockery of the sovereign credit default swap (CDS) market by trying to structure a default via voluntary 50% haircuts in order to avoid triggering CDS claims. […]