Marshall Auerback, who lived in Japan during its early post bubble years, sent this e-mail: Today’s New York Times reports on how the Saudis warned the US about the planned parcel bomb attack emanating from Yemen. Buried in the story was this line: “The German magazine Der Spiegel told The New York Times it would […]
Read more...By Nauro F. Campos, Saul Estrin, and Eugenio Proto, first posted at VoxEU Conventional wisdom says that corruption hurts the economy because it taxes investment and weakens public services. This column presents evidence from interviews with CEOs in Brazil. It argues that corruption acts as a barrier to entry, with potential entrants put off by […]
Read more...As I’ve mentioned from time to time, I lived in Sydney for two years, from 2002 to 2004, long enough to get a decent sense of the culture. Australian policies are intriguing. They are either brilliant or stupid, there seems to be perilously little middle ground. For instance, they’ve done away with the penny, a […]
Read more...The Alice Through the Looking Glass practices, of at best adherence to the mere appearance of legality, increasingly appears to pervade the nether world where financial players go in search of money they think might be due to them. And the big problem is the word “might”. Banks proceed as if there right to collect […]
Read more...Several regular readers were kind enough to send congratulatory e-mails on our New York Times op-ed, which appears in the Sunday edition. I hope you enjoy it. The text follows: In Congressional hearings last week, Obama administration officials acknowledged that uncertainty over foreclosures could delay the recovery of the housing market. The implications for the […]
Read more...It’s astonishing to see how Americans have been conditioned to think that political action and engagement is futile. I’m old enough to have witnessed the reverse, how activism in the 1960s produced significant advances in civil rights blacks and women, and eventually led the US to exit the Vietnam War. I’m reminded of this sense […]
Read more...I’ve harbored the sneaking suspicion that JP Morgan Chase is the worst behaved of the big US retail banks, based on a couple of experiences with them a bit more than two years ago. Not to bore readers with details, but basically, bank staff lied to me persistently regarding the terms of various products. Of […]
Read more...From an alert reader: The United States of America in one short scene, from Politico: MILITARY OFFICERS TOUR JPMORGAN — JPMorgan Chase yesterday hosted about 30 active duty military officers (across all branches and agencies) from the Marine Corps War College in Quantico, Va. The officers met with senior executives, toured the trading floor and […]
Read more...I suspect some readers will take issue with the US being ranked as high as it is, 22 out of 178 nations, in an annual survey of public sector corruption by Transparency International. However, it fell from 19 the year prior, so the trajectory at least is correct. The New York Times provided a brief […]
Read more...It take a fair degree of skill to pen a journalistic story that hews to the appearance of objectivity yet is out to sell a point of view. The lead article in the Journal tonight, “Niche Lawyers Spawned Housing Fracas” telegraphs its bias in its headline: the foreclosure crisis is merely the creation of two […]
Read more...By Jim Quinn, who writes at The Burning Platform As I listen to pundits, politicians and populists expound on the jobs situation in our country day after day, as if they knew what they were talking about, I’m reminded of the Seinfeld episode where George quits his job as a real estate agent. He sits […]
Read more...The Wall Street Journal has a report on Goldman’s new efforts to rebuild its damaged brand. The problem, of course, is that this is certain to be just that, a branding/marketing exercise, not an plan to make fundamental changes. And why should it be? Goldman, even with the heat it received and the fines it […]
Read more...By reader Jackrabbit, hoisted from comments on “Tim Geithner’s Magical Mystery Tour Of TARP Propaganda Has Little Use For Truth“: 1. If you don’t say “no” it isn’t rape TARP was presented as the ONLY way to avert a melt down. The rapist used a gun. A more thoughtful approach would have at least extracted […]
Read more...By Russ, aka Attempter, a sustainability activist trying to help figure out solutions to America’s crisis, who blogs at Volatility As Foreclosuregate, the legal crisis, looms ever larger and becomes a major political issue, the banks and government have scrambled to mount a counteroffensive against the consequences of their crimes. We can see how flat-footed […]
Read more...A couple of articles in the Wall Street Journal, reporting on a conference at the Boston Fed, indicates that some people at the Fed may recognize that the central bank has boxed itself in more than a tad. The first is on the question of whether the Fed is in a liquidity trap. A lot […]
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