I want the word “reform” back. Between health care “reform” and financial services “reform,” Obama, his operatives, and media cheerleaders are trying to depict both initiatives as being far more salutary and far-reaching than they are. This abuse of language is yet another case of the Obama Adminsitration using branding to cover up substantive shortcomings. […]
Read more...In a weak nod to “too big to fail” concerns, House Financial Services Committee chairman Barney Frank announced that larger banks and hedge funds would pay a fee as a way of pre-funding resolution costs. From the Financial Times: The proposed levy emerged as an unwelcome surprise for the industry deep into a late-evening congressional […]
Read more...It was hard to miss the Chinese central bank’s announcement last weekend that it was implementing a ore “flexible” policy toward managing its currency. Numerous Western officials and analysts declared the statement to be a major move, signaling China’s willingness to allow the renminbi to appreciate to a meaningful degree. We, by contrast, called it […]
Read more...In case you have any doubts, not only does the US rank badly on health care metrics, the US has ranked at or next to the bottom of this survey in past years. But be careful in pressing these findings too hard on unreceptive audiences; I lost a friend who insisted the US had the […]
Read more...The UK emergency budget, which will impose a £2billion tax on banks, both domestic and foreign bank operations domiciled there, along with the upcoming G20 meetings, is pushing a contentious issue to the fore: how and how much to tax banks. There are two motivations at work. First, with most advanced economies keen to narrow […]
Read more...The problem with propaganda is that it is generally effective. Utter the Big Lie often enough and most people will come to believe it. The Obama Administration has engaged in persistent misrepresentation of the outcome of the TARP equity injections, which is a manifestation of its early decision to reconstitute as much as possible, the […]
Read more...By Gonzalo Lira, a novelist and filmmaker (and economist) currently living in Chile and writing at Gonzalo Lira I lived in Chile during the Pinochet dictatorship—I can spot a fascist police-state when I see one. The United States is a fascist police-state. Harsh words—incendiary, even. And none too clever of me, to use such language: […]
Read more...The Pentagon, to secure supply lines, is effectively making payments to warlords in Afghanistan. Not only is that undermining the central government (as in by reinforcing competing centers of power), but it also appears to be helping to fund the insurgents. Now before you put that overview in the “You cannot make this stuff up” […]
Read more...The normally bank-friendly Fed fired an unexpected shot across the industry’s bow today, taking issue with its failure to take sufficiently tough measures to curb undue risk-taking. Per the Washington Post: The Federal Reserve has completed an initial review of compensation policies at 28 large banks it oversees and has been giving them confidential feedback […]
Read more...George Magnus, senior economic advisor at UBS, provided a reading of the Chinese central bank’s announcement on its currency policy over the past weekend. He sees it as political, “symbolic rather than substantive.” He also contends that China needs to make significant policy changes. From the Financial Times: It would be churlish not to acknowledge […]
Read more...As we noted last week, Spain has forced the hand of other Eurozone bank regulators by declaring it will release the results of recent ECB stress tests, which earlier were to be published only on an aggregated basis, not bank by bank. There is still a good bit of confusion as to what happens next. […]
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. Calls for global rebalancing are back in vogue, while the debate about the appropriate stance of domestic policy heats […]
Read more...The Chinese central bank made a vague announcement about its currency policy on its website today, which the officialdom, on cue, treated as a major move (to wit: “China vows increased currency flexibility” at the Financial Times, “Chinese say they intend to free up their currency,” Washington Post).) As we describe below, this “announcement” is […]
Read more...Readers may recall that we highlighted the report last week in the New York Times of an estimated trillion dollars worth of valuable materials, including copper, gold, and lithium. We pointed out that this announcement was awfully convenient, coming on the heels of reports that the efforts to pacify the country weren’t going terribly well. […]
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