The EU ‘Doom Loop’: Bloc Set to Embrace More Austerity Despite Evidence It Will Cause Further Rightward Shift
The National Rally wins first round in France. Why do the self-described centrists keep making it so easy for the far right?
Read more...Category Archives: Summer rerun
Ilargi: Ukraine Warheads
A prescient piece on the trajectory of Ukraine-Russia tensions.
Read more...Journey into a Libertarian Future: Part II – The Strategy
Where you wind up when you take libertarian ideas to their logical conclusion…..
Read more...Why Don’t Americans Take More Vacations? Blame It on Independence Day
How businesses created Americanization Day, later Independence Day, to counter the rising labor movement.
Read more...Philadelphia Fed Study Debunks Main Argument for Student Debt Slavery
Evidence that the justification for putting student loan borrowers on the rack was ideological garbage.
Read more...NC Classic: The Tinkerbell Market
A classic from our market commentary in the runup to the financial crisis.
Read more...“Summer” Rerun: “Why America Will Need Some Elements of a Welfare State”
In 2007, the Financial Times’ Martin Wolf Wolf concluded that America needed some form of a welfare state. His argument is as valid now as then. Yet it is hard to imagine that anyone would make it now, particularly in light of the effort of soi-disant liberals to pretend that Obamacare insurance policies bear any resemblance to “universal health care”.
Read more...Debunking “The Big Short”: How Michael Lewis Turned the Real Villains of the Crisis into Heroes
How Michael Lewis’ The Big Short, whether for profit or by accident, has denied the public the truth about what really causes the crisis.
Read more...“Summer” Rerun: Quelle Surprise! Hank Paulson and Goldman CEO Talked to Each Other a Lot!
As I like to say, I started out on Wall Street when it was criminal only at the margin. The unseemly coziness between Goldman and keygovernment agencies in critical episodes during the crisis illustrates how much standards of conduct have deteriorated.
Read more...“Summer” Rerun: So Where, Exactly, Did Lehman’s $130 Billion Go?
Dear readers,
We reinstituting a Naked Capitalism feature, the summer rerun. The last time we reprised an archival NC post (aside from a few more recent ones by Matt Stoller) was a July 9, 2009 post that we published again on December 29, 2011.
Interestingly, picking up again from 2009 serves as a reminder of issues that were hot in the aftermath of the crisis that were not addressed adequately, if at all. Here, we discuss the mystery of the magnitude of Lehman’s losses. We pointed out that they are so large and impossible to explain that there had to be accounting fraud, but the bankruptcy overseer had its own reasons not go to there.
Note that this post was published eights months before Anton Valukus released his report on the Lehman bankruptcy, which described the Repo 105 ruse that allowed Lehman to hide over $50 billion of dodgy assets at quarter end and thus not include them in its financial reports.
Read more...Summer Rerun: Why Is the Left Slice of the Democrats Getting Crushed?
“I’m flabbergasted. I’m embarrassed. This is the biggest screw-up electorally that I’ve ever been involved in,” said one progressive activist still sorting through the wreckage.
Read more...Summer Rerun: Why Don’t Americans Take More Vacations? Blame It on Independence Day
If you think Independence Day came to be a national holiday as an organic expression of pride in our successful rebellion against England, you need to think twice.
Read more...The Moneysburg Address
Remarks rumored to have been delivered by Justice Antonin Scalia at an Opus Dei gathering on July 4, 2011
Eleven score and fifteen years ago our Incorporators brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in free markets, and dedicated to the proposition that all corporate persons are created equal.
Read more...What the Mortgage Deal Reveals About The Obama Administration
Edward Harrison here. I was reading Yves’ excellent post on The Top Twelve Reasons Why You Should Hate the Mortgage Settlement and I thought about a post I wrote a year ago on what this was all about. I am re-posting this post verbatim below but I just want to say a few words first. […]
Read more...“Summer” Rerun: Why Big Capital Markets Players Are Unmanageable
This post first appeared on July 8, 2009
John Kay comes perilously close to nailing a key issue in his current Financial Times comment, “Our banks are beyond the control of mere mortal” in that he very clearly articulates the problem very well but then draws the wrong conclusion:
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