Category Archives: Dubious statistics

US Retirement Benefits to be Cut?

Tom Ferguson, professor of political science professor at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, is in fine form here. Enjoy!

Guest Post: Will Policy Exits Just Be Revolving Doors?

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. Both fiscal and monetary policymakers have said that they will begin to unwind the stimulative policy stances when the […]

China Expects to Announce Trade Deficit for March

A story in China Daily indicates that the Chinese offiicaldom foresees a record trade deficit for March: The country will probably see a “record trade deficit” in March thanks to surging imports, Minister of Commerce Chen Deming said on Sunday, while warning that Beijing will “fight back” if Washington labels China a currency manipulator. Speaking […]

“Not Only Repo 105”: Total Return Swaps Also Used for Window-Dressing

A reader wrote to tell me his firm had been shown transactions at the end of 2007 from an investment bank (not Lehman) that he was confident were to tart up its balance sheet. This confirms the hardly shocking idea that window dressing was not limited to Lehman: Around Dec 2007 bank I work for […]

Can We Please Refrain From Consensus-Defending Narratives When the Consensus Was Wrong?

I’m having a Dean Baker moment. Baker’s blog Beat the Press engages in short-form shreddings of the economic reporting of the day, with the New York Times and the Washington Post his favorite targets (for instance, Baker at least once a week criticizes the MSM for relying on forecasts from economists who failed to see […]

Das: Mark to Make Believe – Still Toxic After All These Years!

By Satyajit Das, a risk consultant and author of Traders, Guns & Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives In 2007, as the credit crisis commenced, paradoxically, nobody actually defaulted. Outside of sub-prime delinquencies, corporate defaults were at a record low. Instead, investors in high quality (AAA or AA) rated securities, that […]

Auerback: Will We Have to Blow Up a Continent (Again) Before We Stop Wall Street?

By Marshall Auerback, a fund manager and investment strategist who writes for New Deal 2.0. Surprise, surprise: Wall Street tactics akin to the ones that fostered subprime mortgages in America have worsened the financial crisis shaking Greece, Spain, Portugal, and undermined the euro by enabling European governments to hide their mounting debts. This has now […]

Guest Post: Larry Summers Is Like a Guy Who Yells That the Sun Really DOES Revolve Around the Earth and that the Current Orbit is Just a Temporary Aberration . . . and That If We Just Wait a Little While, “Everything Will Return to Normal”

Two leading White House economic advisors – Larry Summers and Christina Romer – are giving very different views on the economy. As Fox news summarizes: “Everybody agrees that the recession is over,” said Larry Summers, director of the National Economic Council. “Of course not,” countered Council of Economic Advisers Chairwoman Christina Romer in a separate […]

The China Decoupling Myth?

One of the motherhood and apple pie items in econ-land is that the world needs global rebalancing, which is code for China has to stop being a mercantilist and currency manipulator, and the US has to quit borrowing a ton and overconsuming (or underproducing, which is another way to frame the same problem). But once […]

Bank of America Foreclosure Shenanigans?

About a week ago, I got this message from a reader: I heard a rumor from a very well placed source that BOFA will foreclose 500,000 houses over the next 10 months. They plan to move these houses very aggressively; they will go to auction 90 days from foreclosure if they are not sold by […]

Frank Veneroso: Employment Losses Probably Continue at a 300,000 a Month Rate

From Veneroso Associates’ US Economy October Employment Report, ” Huge Discrepancy Between the Payroll and Household Surveys: Executive Summary 1. According to BLS, payrolls fell at a 188,000 a month rate over the last three months. But their own household survey says employment fell at a 589,000 a month rate. 2. Why the discrepancy? 3. […]

Guest Post: Wall Street Journal Admits Economists Were Wrong, But Fails to Discuss their INCENTIVE for Being Wrong

By George Washington of Washington’s Blog. The Wall Street Journal admits this week that economists blew it: The pain of the financial crisis has economists striving to understand precisely why it happened and how to prevent a repeat… The crisis exposed the inadequacy of economists’ traditional tool kit, forcing them to revisit questions many had […]

“Fed Self-Evaluation: Marking Monetary Policy to Model”

By Richard Alford, a former economist at the New York Fed. Since them, he has worked in the financial industry as a trading floor economist and strategist on both the sell side and the buy side. It has been frequently charged that the Fed, under Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke, kept interest rates too low […]