Category Archives: Politics

Guest Post: Congressional Legislation Part II

Submitted by Lune. As promised, the following is part II about the legislative process. While the first post was primarily about how Congress gathers information, this post will look at some of the forces affecting Congress’s ability to create good legislation. As you’ll quickly notice, IMHO, the news isn’t very good… Anyone who watches Congress […]

Geithner Bullies Financial Regulators to Accept Fed as Top Dog

The Wall Street Journal reports that Timothy Geithner tongue-lashed Federal financial services regulators over their bucking the Obama Administration initiative for the Fed to become The One Regulator to Rule Them All. This comes on the heels of Congressional testimony which showed rather clearly that the key actors were not singing from the same hymnal. […]

Guest Post: Recent Lehman MD Reviews "A Colossal Failure of Common Sense"

Submitted by Arthur Doyle, a managing director at Lehman Brothers until the summer of 2008. When an apple has ripened and falls, why does it fall? Because of its attraction to the earth, because its stalk withers, because it is dried by the sun, because it grows heavier, because the wind shakes it, or because […]

US Manufacturing: Guns R Us?

Reader Jason Pl pointed out this post from Jon Taplin, which starts with the less than cheery chart on US durable goods production courtesy Floyd Norris. As you can see, the only growth biz is military: Military contracting procedures means that work will stay with domestic players. So one could take the cynical view that […]

Guest Post: Congressional Hearings, the New American Kabuki

Submitted by Lune (N.B.: this post, and a subsequent Part II regarding the legislative process, are focused on the political processes of DC rather than economics per se. However, to the extent that the future of the financial world is now being determined in Washington, I figured there might be some value for Naked Capitalism’s […]

SEC Taking More Aggressive Stance on CEO Clawbacks

The SEC is pursuing a rather odd case, odd in the sense that while the media is getting very excited about it, it strikes me as having perilous little general applicability. The broad strokes via the Financial Times: The US Securities and Exchange Commission’s attempt to use – for the first time – a “clawback” […]

Guest Post: Is the Problem the Models or the Modelers?

Submitted 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. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our model, but in ourselves–apologies to W Shakespeare The economics profession […]

Did Federal Reserve Remove Some Embarrassing Bernanke Testimony?

Readers, I will confess I am only a user of garden variety search tools, with no special training, merely years of trial and error. I am having to do a quite a bit of rooting around these days to track down support for various arguments I am putting together for the book. I decided to […]

Citi Trader, Who Made $100 Million Last Year, Insists on Keeping His Deal in Place

On the surface, the particulars of this case seem simple. A Citigroup commodities trader who says he has a contract that could yield him a $100 million payment this year is crossing swords with the new Treasury pay czar, Kenneth Feinberg. The Wall Street Journal story portrays the pay deal for the trader, Andrew Hall, […]

Guest Post: Representative Alan Grayson on His Questions to Bernanke Over Dollar Swap Lines

From Congressman Alan Grayson, member of the House Financial Services Committee and representative to the 8th Congressional District of Florida: Hi, Alan Grayson here. I just questioned Ben Bernanke in a Financial Services Committee hearing over the Federal Reserveís use of swap lines. You can watch the clip here. There was some good discussion on […]

Alan Grayson: "Where is the half a trillion dollars the Federal Reserve lent to foreigners?"

I found this exchange intriguing. First, the unflappable Bernanke looks stressed. I can’t put my finger on why, but the Congressional attacks seem to be getting to him. Second is the stunning lack of candor as to why the dollar swap lines were put in place, that there was massive dollar deleveraging happening. It would […]

Denninger Savages WaPo Defense of Goldman

It simply amazes me that those who are cheerleading the seeming return of Wall Street to health overlook the extensive, hydra-headed subsidies they’ve received and continue to receive. The media has bought and is touting the line, “Hey, they (more accurately some) paid back the TARP, so what’s the beef?” Let us consider the other […]

Bair and Bernanke Back Size Disincentives For Banks

In an about-face, the Administration seems to be getting serous about trying to Do Something about the too-big-to-fail syndrome. Or is it? The proposal comes from Shiela Bair, and does not have the support of the Treasury Department. Curiously, Bloomberg reports that Bernanke has endorsed the Bair plan, which unusually puts him in opposition with […]

Is a Value Added Tax in Your Future?

The first time I every heard of value added taxes was in the early 1970s, and all the stuff I saw then said the VAT was a bad tax, you raised as much from a sales tax with far lower administrative costs. The economic and policy literature was as one-sided as I have ever seen […]

A Bit of Goldman Schadenfreude

Wellie, we get a bit of cheery news of sorts to take the edge off the sting that Goldman, presumably alive today thanks to the many ministrations of the government, ultimately borne by chumps like you and me, is off again looting making money hand over fist. It appears that quite a lot of Goldman […]