Category Archives: The dismal science

Floyd Norris Repeats “Big Banks Are Necessary/Desirable” Canard

Aargh, can someone please acquaint economists with the economics of banking? Consider the embarrassing premise of a piece by Floyd Norris of the New York Times:

If big banks start failing again, what will replace them?

Google Rates Website Wonkiness

This post’s headline misrepresents the apparent intent of a new Google filter in its advanced search function. Per the SearchEngineLand report, “Google Lets You Dumb Down Your Search Results With “Reading Level” Filter,” the aim is apparently to allow web surfers to steer clear of pages that might be too taxing.

Satyajit Das: The Past, The Present and an “Unusually Uncertain” Future

By Satyajit Das, an international expert on financial derivatives and author of Traders, Guns & Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives.

Nicholas Phillipson (2010) Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life; Allen Lane

Matt Taibbi (2010) Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire and the Long Con That Is Breaking America; Random House

Joe Nocera and Bethany McLean (2010) All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis; Portfolio

Hamish MacDonald (2010) Mahabharata in Polyester: The Making of the World’s Richest Brothers and Their Feud: New South

Jeff Kingston (2011) Contemporary Japan: History, Politics and Social Change Since the 1980s; John Wiley

Bill Black: No, Mr. President, you did not negotiate a winning tax deal

By Bill Black, Associate Professor of Economics and Law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and a former senior financial regulator

This column analyses Obama’s claim that he got the better of the Republicans in the negotiations.

The administration (implicitly) argues that its claim of extraordinary negotiating success represents a miraculous accomplishment given the facts that the Republicans were holding all legislation hostage to their non-negotiable demand that the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest of Americans be extended and the administration’s irrevocable decision that it could not call the Republican’s bluff because the economy would likely sink back into recession unless tax cuts for the middle class were immediately passed…..

The third problem is that no element of the claimed miracle is true….

Marshall Auerback: What Happens if Germany Exits the Euro?

By Marshall Auerback, a portfolio strategist, hedge fund manager, and Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow. Like marriage, membership in the euro zone is supposed to be a lifetime commitment, “for better or for worse”. But as we know, divorces do occur, even if the marriage was entered into with the best of intentions. And the recent […]

Barry Eichengreen: Ireland’s rescue package – Disaster for Ireland, bad omen for the Eurozone

By Barry Eichengreen, Professor of Economics and Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley; and formerly Senior Policy Advisor at the International Monetary Fund. Cross posted from VoxEU Irish interest spreads did not fall and contagion continues. Here one of the world’s leading international economists explains why. Short-sighted, wishful thinking by EU and German […]

More on the Damaging Implications of Corporate Cash-Hoarding

John Authers of the Financial Times provides an update on corporate cash-hoarding. In brief, it’s getting worse due to probably-warranted executive nervousness about business prospects. As Authers puts it: Corporate chieftains the world over have lots of cash, and want to hold on to it. It is a critical symptom of a new Age of […]

Guest Post: A recession to remember – Lessons from the US, 1937–1938

Yves here. Normally I put up cross posts without additional commentary, but I wanted to offer a couple of observations about this post. While this piece is admittedly a bit heavy on economist-speak, and readers may differ with the policy recommendations, = it gives an even-handed account of the early rebound during the Great Depression […]

Chomsky Calls ECONNED “Great”

From an interview of Noam Chomsky by Keane Bhatt, “Chomsky: ‘The Business Elites … Are Instinctive Marxists’” in TruthOut. The funny bit is I was reading this piece (per referral by reader May S) and found this section in it: KB: In characterizing the U.S. financial crisis, you say that “markets are inefficient … They […]

Alford: The Fed Tests The Thesis That Two Wrongs Don’t Make A Right, But Three Do

By Richard Alford, a former economist at the New York Fed. Since then, he has worked in the financial industry as a trading floor economist and strategist on both the sell side and the buy side. In reaction to the OPEC-engineered oil price spikes of the 1970s, which economists would depict as external negative supply […]

Auerback: Amateur Hour at the Federal Reserve

By Marshall Auerback, a portfolio strategist and Roosevelt Institute Fellow As any student of Economics 101 realises, you can control the price of something, or the quantity, but not both simultaneously. In announcing its decision to purchase an additional $600bn of treasuries last week, the Federal Reserve presumably intended to create additional stimulus to an […]

Costello: On Trade

By Joe Costello, former communications director for Jerry Brown’s 1992 presidential campaign and senior adviser for Howard Dean’s effort in 2004; first posted at Archein “You going to liberate us girls from male, white, corporate oppression?” Tell em like it is, Fear of a Female Planet Fear baby Let everybody know — Sonic Youth When […]