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...By Delusional Economics, who is determined to cleanse the daily flow of vested interests propaganda to produce a balanced counterpoint. Cross posted from MacroBusiness.
As I talked about yesterday the outcomes of the failing policies enacted by European leaders in the face of the economic crisis boil down to a lose-lose struggle between international creditors and national citizens.
Read more...Sheila Bair’s new book Bull by the Horns is out and based on early reports, it looks like it skewers the bailouts in general and Tim Geithner in particular. But it also gets a lot into the weeds in what still needs to be fixed in bank-land, which is a part of these crisis post-mortems and retrospectives that too often get short shrift.
Read more...By Delusional Economics, who is determined to cleanse the daily flow of vested interests propaganda to produce a balanced counterpoint. Cross posted from MacroBusiness.
I genuinely thought the Europeans were getting somewhere in the last few weeks as I detected (or maybe that should be optimistically hoped) a change of rhetoric from some of the more hardened camps and a growing realisation that the current approach to “solving” the crisis is failing. My optimism was helped by the fact that the OMT, like the LTRO before it, has driven down sovereign yields which has given the European leaders yet another opportunity to sit down away from the fire fighting and discuss outcomes beyond a short term market window.
But alas, this is Europe and I appear to have been wrong.
Read more...It’s hard to tell whether the situation described in an article the New Haven Register is very unusual, or just under the radar by design. But either way, it does not pass the smell test.
Read more...We’ve written a lot about the scientism of mainstream economics, both here and in ECONNED, and how these trappings have let the discipline continue to have a special seat at the policy table despite ample evidence of its failure. As bad as this is, it pales in comparison to the overt corruption of science at work in the drug arena. Although this issue comes to light from time to time, often in the context of litigation, the lay public is largely ignorant of how systematic and pervasive the efforts are to undermine good research practice in order to foist more, expensive, and sometimes dangerous drugs onto patients.
Read more...If you had any doubt that the ongoing coup by bankers and their allies was proceeding apace, the latest story from Shahien Nasiripour of the Financial Times should settle all doubts.
Read more...Although I generally refrain from posting on Big Ag and relegate the topic to Links, I have a special interest in Monsanto. Last year, I had wanted to devise a list or ranking of top predatory companies, but could not find a way to make the tally sufficiently objective to be as useful in calling them out as it ought to be. Nevertheless, no matter how many ways I looked at the issue, it was clear that any ranking would put Monsanto as number 1.
Read more...On the one hand, given that the Eurozone remains a major economic and financial flashpoint, it is good to see a major news service like Bloomberg provide a lengthy report on a continuing existential threat, that of deposit flight, or as we have described it, a slow motion bank run. But it’s a bit surprising it has taken them this long to take notice.
Read more...Reader Deontos highlighted a post on Reuters by two Brooklyn Law School professors, Bradley Borden and David Reiss, on a subject near and dear to our hearts, the abject failure of the IRS to take interest in widespread, probably pervasive, violations of REMIC, the part of the Federal tax code that governs mortgage securitizations.
The reason this matters is that this situation belies on of the Administration’s pet claims, that its hands were tied as far as addressing the foreclosure mess was concerned because it had no leverage over servicers. As we’ll discuss, in fact the Administration has a nuclear weapon in its hands that it is simply refusing to use.
Read more...By Ian Fraser, a financial journalist who blogs at his web site and at qfinance. His Twitter is @ian_fraser.
The UK’s failed regulator, the Financial Services Authority, is up to its old tricks again. Last week, it sought to scapegoat just one of the 16 directors who drove the awesomely badly managed British bank Halifax Bank of Scotland into the ground. And all he received was a £500,000 fine and a lifetime ban from working in the financial sector.
Read more...In this interview with Max Keiser, Yanis Varoufakis gives a vivid account of conditions on the ground in Greece and why he is still pessimistic for the prospects for the eurozone.
Read more...In an perverse case of synchronicity, one headline last night touted regulatory efforts to address systemic risk as another highlighted bank efforts to increase it. And the ongoing efforts of banks to expand risk creation is no accident.
Read more...By Delusional Economics. Cross posted from MacroBusiness.
While we wait for tonight’s announcement from the German constitutional court, there are some interesting developments in the Troika’s latest review of Portugal:
Read more...Memo to Andrew Ross Sorkin: if you are going to try to discredit someone, it’s more effective if you are less obvious about it.
Read more...