One element of the coming budget pact that is not getting the attention it warrants is a covert effort to gut military benefits by privatizing them.
Read more...Yves here. One of the things that has too often gone missing in the many discussions of why massive scale money launderer HSBC was not prosecuted is the basis of the “doing that would be destabilizing” excuse. When a company is indicted (mind you, indicted, not convicted), pretty much all Federal and many (most?) state agencies are required to stop doing business with it, immediately. The effect of the loss of so much business, particularly for a large financial firm, is seen as a death knell.
Of course, that’s the point.
Read more...By Abigail Field, a lawyer and writer. Cross posted from Reality Check
Showalter pushes the ‘it’s not the mod terms, it’s the bad borrower’ idea with far more than just a “Living Large” headline. He invents two couples, pitched as archetypes of good and evil, probably hoping to copy the policy-killing success of Harry and Louise. But this invocation of the irresponsible borrower myth is particularly egregious–both borrowers are trying to be responsible in the face of insolvency.
Read more...ow that student loans are undeniably in bubble territory, the officialdom is starting to wake up and take notice.
Read more...The New York Fed’s William Dudley gave a surprisingly candid, meaning not positive, assessment of the state of the Too Big to Fail problem in a speech yesterday at the Clearing House’s Second Annual Business Meeting and Conference. From the text of his speech (hat tip Richard Smith):
Read more...Greg Smith’s book on his time at Goldman has generated a hailstorm of criticism, aptly summed up by Jesse:
Read more...But the absolute trashing and personal attacks on Greg Smith in the past week that were orchestrated by Goldman and supported, heavily, by the US financial networks got my attention. Generally ad hominem attacks are used by those who consider the facts of the case to be dangerous ground, and wish to do anything that they can to avoid discussing them.
By Rowan Bosworth-Davies, a former head of investigations at regulator FIMBRA (Financial Intermediaries, Managers and Brokers Regulatory Association) and a former Scotland Yard Fraud Squad detective. Cross posted from Ian Fraser’s blog
“Go where you will, in business parts, or meet who you like of businessmen, it is – and has been for the last three years – the same story and the same lament. Dishonesty, untruth, and what may, in plain English, be termed mercantile swindling within the limits of the law, exists on all sides and on every quarter…”
No, this is not a comment from a contemporary website. It comes from an editorial published in Temple Bar – A London Magazine for Town and Country Readers in 1866. It was written at a time when England was experiencing a plethora of fraudulent offerings in railway shares, but the tenor of its complaint is as relevant today as it was then.
Read more...An important piece in the Financial Times by Manmohan Singh, a senior economist at the International Monetary Fund, describes persuasively how one of the central vehicles for reducing derivatives risk, that of having a central counterparty (CCP) and requiring dealers to trade with it rather than have a web of bi-lateral exposures, or rely on banks to act as clearers (making them too big to fail) has gone pear shaped. While the immediate reason for this outcome is the unwillingness of national banking regulators to cede powers to an international clearinghouse, Singh fingers an equally important cause: the reluctance to recognize that the underlying problem was and remains undercollateralized derivatives positions. His introduction to the mess:
Read more...By Rajiv Sethi, Professor of Economics, Barnard College, Columbia University & External Professor, Santa Fe Institute. Cross posted from his blog
Sheila Bair’s new book, Bull by the Horns, is both a crisis narrative and a thoughtful reflection on economic institutions and policy. The crisis narrative, with its revealing first-hand accounts of high-level meetings, high-stakes negotiations, behind-the-scenes jockeying, and clashing personalities will attract the most immediate attention. But it’s the economic analysis that will constitute the more enduring contribution.
Read more...In this speech,Robert Jenkins of the Bank of England blows apart the self-serving myths that ‘old guard’ bankers and their lobbyists have been peddling since the financial crisis ripped apart the global financial system in 2007.
Read more...Yves here. This article falls in the “mirabile dictu” category: an economist arguing that putting bankers in jail is necessary to combat the deterioration in behavior.
By Giancarlo Spagnolo, Professor of Economics at University of Rome “Tor Vergata” and CEPR Research Affiliate. Cross posted from VoxEU
How to save the banks but not the bankers? This column argues that fines for criminal behaviour in banks are not enough – it may be time to start locking people up.
Read more...By L. Randall Wray, Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Cross posted from Economonitor
As the Global Financial Crisis rumbles along in its fifth year, we read the latest revelations of bankster fraud, the LIBOR scandal. This follows the muni bond fixing scam detailed a couple of weeks ago, as well as the J.P. Morgan trading fiasco and the Corzine-MF Global collapse and any number of other scandals in recent months. In every case it was traders run amuck, fixing “markets” to make an easy buck at someone’s expense. In times like these, I always recall Robert Sherrill’s 1990 statement about the S&L crisis that “thievery is what unregulated capitalism is all about.”
Read more...By Chris Cook, former compliance and market supervision director of the International Petroleum Exchange
A generation of markets is dying and the era of the Middleman is coming to an end. The ‘Bezzle’ – as J K Galbraith described financial misbehaviour in a boom, revealed by a bust – is now coming to light.
Read more...By Satyajit Das, derivatives expert and the author of Extreme Money: The Masters of the Universe and the Cult of Risk (2011)
Jonathan Fenby (2012) Tiger Head, Snake Tails: China Today, How It Got There and Where It is Heading
Robert Frank (2011) Who Repo’d My Jet: the manic millionaires, and why they’ll lead us to the next boom and bust
John Coates (2012) The Hour Between Dog and Wolf: Risk Taking, Gut Feelings and the Biology of Boom and Bust
Personal – relating to an individual or what serves the interest of that individual. Personality – distinctive assemblage of qualities which defines an individual, frequently in modern life conflated with celebrity. These three books deal with the ‘personal’ and ‘personality’ in the financial world.
Read more...Yves here. Mr. Market is in a tizzy today over, per Bloomberg, “concerns over the slowdown of growth”. Cynics might note that journalists have to attribute motives to market moves, when their waxing and waning often defies logic. Nevertheless, we’ve had disappointing reports out of China, a bad Philly Fed manufacturing report, a less than stellar initial jobless claims report, and not so hot housing data this AM, and more and more signs of inability to bail out the sinking Titanic of the Eurozone (a meaningless announcement compounded by continued focus on ongoing German court challenges to more aggressive support of rescues. Even if these cases lose, any uncertainty and delay has the potential to accelerate the ongoing bank run out of periphery countries).
This post from VoxEU is a good short form summary of how the Eurozone got into this fix.
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