The defenders of the economic orthodoxy have gotten much more shrill of late. In a perverse way, this is probably a positive sign: they might be feeling a tad worried that they are starting to lose their hold over consensus reality. But given how quick various media outlets are to pick up and amplify their […]
Read more...I’m not certain what to make of an article at the New York Times this evening, “Senate Liberals Move to Toughen Bill Regulating Wall Street.” Liberals? That is a word that has almost disappeared from polite conversation. “Liberal” is a term used by those of the conservative persuasion to discredit anyone to the left of […]
Read more...By Yves Smith and Tom Adams, an attorney and former monoline executive The Fed and its friends and enablers in power, most recently Rahm Emanuel, are fighting tooth and nail to beat back the Audit the Fed amendments to pending financial reform legislation. That’s unfortunate and misguided. Even a cursory inspection of the Fed’s disclosures […]
Read more...But opacity, leverage, and moral hazard are not accidental byproducts of otherwise salutary innovations; they are the direct intent of the innovations. No one at the major capital markets firms was celebrated for creating markets to connect borrowers and savers transparently and with low risk. After all, efficient markets produce minimal profits. They were instead […]
Read more...Reader Hubert sent along this post, with permission, and the following note: My friend Erwin has published a book out of ten years of columns for the German paper “Die Welt”. He put an Intro in front of it where he lays out why Germany will go down the tubes as everybody else. It is […]
Read more...I’ve recounted my own sorry experience with Chase, in which branch staff repeatedly misrepresented its business checking product. I’ve closed that account, but Chase nevertheless managed to extract some fees on a supposedly “fee free” account. Another example of Chase’s aggressive and less than upstanding conduct comes from a reader via e-mail: I have been […]
Read more...One of the things that has been striking as revelation of bad behavior in the collateralized debt market has gotten more press is that a number of commentators who had taken the “nothing to see here, move on” stance have gotten religion. Even more dramatic has been the change in perception of Goldman. The firm […]
Read more...By Satyajit Das, a risk consultant and author of Traders, Guns & Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives Jennifer Burns (2010) “Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right” Oxford University Press One of the strange by-products of the publishing boom around the global financial crisis is the revival […]
Read more...It’s ironic how the “Goldman was so smart to have shorted subprime” meme is now being turned on its head in the MSM as Goldman’s conduct in the run-up to the crisis is begin re-examined in a new light. The underlying premise of the Goldman defenders is that it is fine for the firm to […]
Read more...A 15 year veteran of Wall Street who put us on to Magnetar disappeared unexpectedly, much to our concern. He resurfaced recently and gave us a bulletin: Sorry I’ve been out of touch so long. It’s just that I’ve become quite disappointed/disaffected by the whole thing. We have failed and “they” have won. All the […]
Read more...By Satyajit Das, a risk consultant and author of Traders, Guns & Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives Zygmunt Bauman (2007) Liquid Times: Living in an Age of Uncertainty; Polity Press, Cambridge Zygmunt Bauman (2010) Living on Borrowed Times; Polity Press, Cambridge Alex Preda (2009) Framing Finance: The Boundaries of Markets […]
Read more...The Roosevelt Institute sponsored a conference at the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs, “Facing the Fracture: Media & Economic Understanding,” which focused on the reporting challenge posed by the global financial crisis, particularly given the continuing economic pressures on news organizations. I’ve seen the difficulties faced by the MSM in conventional terms, and […]
Read more...The Kraft acquisition of Cadbury provides a vivid illustration of why the US model of screwing workers to preserve executive bonuses does not go over well abroad. Brief synopsis: Kraft acquires the 200 year old British confection-maker Cadbury after a heated battle. The chairwoman and CEO Irene Rosenfeld (already not a good sign, best practice […]
Read more...Those who remember the sorry saga of the Iraq war no doubt recall the numerous, shifting explanations of why the US attacked an unprovoked invasion of a country that had no ability to mount an attack on the US. Once the canard of “weapons of mass destruction” was dismissed, one of the next set of […]
Read more...One has to wonder whether anyone in a position of influence really believes what he is selling. At best, Jamie Dimon’s defense of too big to fail banks like his own JP Morgan is a vivid illustration of Upton Sinclair’s saying, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends […]
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