One of the salient differences between Greenspan’s and Bernanke’s tenure as Fed chairman (at least so far) was Greenspan’s skill at playing to his audience, which was the financial press, Congress, and market participants. With the publication of his memoirs next week, Greenspan will be performing for a larger crowd, although it will be dominated […]
Read more...Bloomberg has a good piece today contrasting Bernanke’s and Greenspan’s problem solving styles. But reading it set off a flash as to where their real difference lie. We’ll review Bloomberg’s take and then mine. The Bloomberg piece, “Bernanke Spurns Greenspan Quick Fix, Seeking Data, Deliberation,” is a flattering bit of reporting. It tells us that […]
Read more...One of our forms of recreation is keeping an eye on how coverage of certain news stories in the Wall Street Journal is curiously different than elsewhere. We’ve noted before that the WSJ tends to put a happy face on economic and market news (its company reporting is considerably more evenhanded). The latest reporting disparity […]
Read more...I’m late to this item, and I probably should let it go, but it is so disingenuous (I’m tempted to say intellectually dishonest) that I can’t let it go by. On Sunday, the New York Times ran an “Economics View” article, “It’s Monetary Policy, Not a Morality Play,” by Tyler Cowen, well known libertarian and […]
Read more...Readers have probably figured out that I think the reporting in the Wall Street Journal is overrated. We have a prime example on page one today, “How Market Turmoil Waylaid the ‘Quants’.” My understanding is that newspapers are in the business of providing news. The story that the quants are in trouble is a month […]
Read more...Boy, is sentiment changing. The latest indicator: an article in MarketWatch bemoaning the demise of Glass Steagall, the law enacted in 1933 that separated commercial banking from investment banking. The article by Thomas Kostigen gets the history wrong. It makes it sound as if the repeal of Glass Steagall in 1999 was a watershed event. […]
Read more...Will someone, please, teach the reporters at the Wall Street Journal the basics about scientific research? I know it’s hard finding stuff to write about day in, day out. But the story “Scholars Link Success of Firms To Lives of CEOs” is a travesty. The centerpiece of the article is a study by Morten Bennedsen, […]
Read more...Ah, fall is upon us, and with it comes the spectacle of renewed discussion of what to do about the snowballing subprime/housing mess. Members of Congress will compete for air time to Bemoan the Situation, Search for the Guilty, and Throw Money at the Problem. Note there may occasionally be thoughtful analysis and sensible regulatory […]
Read more...This story, on the Chinese successfully making a cyber attack on the Pentagon, is admittedly a bit wide of the subject matter of this blog, but it’s a major story that the Financial Times seems to have broken. I don’t see it on the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, CNN or Bloomberg sites. Bizarrely, […]
Read more...Frankly, this is pathetic. If Bernanke and his minions can’t take the heat of some well-deserved criticism from the highly-regarded Martin Wolf of the Financial Times, they don’t belong in public service. To recap: yesterday, Wolf issued a stinging rebuke of Bernanke’s conduct on the Financial Times editorial page, in “Central banks should not rescue […]
Read more...It must be miserable to be a central banker these days. Not only are they confronted with the worst mess in at least a generation, but too many interested parties, from the financial services industry to politicians and some members of the media, expect them to deliver the impossible, namely status quo ante. The reassessment […]
Read more...The media is typically kind to newly-elected leaders, so now it’s Sarkozy who is getting favorable press treatment. And when we say “burnishing image,” we mean it literally. From the BBC: The French magazine Paris Match touched up a photograph of President Nicolas Sarkozy on his US holiday, making his figure more svelte. Leading news […]
Read more...The Fed’s move on Friday to lower discount rates and its policy shift towards addressing risks to growth has not brought relief to the sector that was in the most distress, the money markets. Panicked action continued Monday, begging the question of what, if anything, the authorities can do. Institutional are fleeing from counterparty risk […]
Read more...A Bloomberg story, in what may be becoming conventional wisdom, charges Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke with making a novice’s error: By lowering the discount rate and issuing a statement conceding threats to the economy, Federal Open Market Committee members effectively ripped up the economic-outlook statement from their Aug. 7 meeting. Some economists describe the […]
Read more...I was planning to go on long form about what the Fed should do, and now they have gone ahead and done it. That means I now have to write something very substantive. More on that later, but here is a roundup of some good posts: Cassandra depicts the credit crunch as a horror movie, […]
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