Interesting piece by Tyler Durden of Zero Hedge on the X Factor in the banking crisis: the exact value of the $8T in loans of all types held by banks on their balance sheets. Did they think housing would never decline? Apparently, for some, yes. Game theory explains lunacy of the Treasury’s funding of private, [...]
Archive for the ‘Economy’ Category
Web Round-Up
Posted in 4GW War, Economy, obama, Somalia on 9 Apr 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Some Comic Relief
Posted in Economy, tagged Bailouts, Geithner, obama, South Park, Treasury on 31 Mar 2009 | 2 Comments »
More like this over at Daily Bail.
Obama: Helping the Yeoman Billionaires
Posted in Economy, obama, Politics, tagged ABS, Banks, Bernanke, Clinton, Detroit, Free Markets, Geithner, GM, Housing Crisis, Keynes, Krugman, MBS on 31 Mar 2009 | 3 Comments »
If we’re going to be spending tons of money on helping banks and dying, mismanaged companies, would it be too much to ask that the redistribution does not go from the productive 25% or so of this country to the risk-preferring .0001% on Wall Street, but that these huge sums actually goes to homeowners in [...]
Some Sensible Proposals for Regulatory Reform
Posted in Economy, obama, Politics, tagged CDS, de Soto, Insurance, Moral Hazard, Property, Property Rights, Regulation, Soros on 25 Mar 2009 | 7 Comments »
Just as we don’t allow strangers to take out life insurance policies on those to whom they have no real relationship, it would be appropriate to scale back the huge credit-default-swap markets to those who are actually parties to the underlying transactions. What has happened instead is that a secondary markets many times bigger than [...]
Gaming the Geithner Plan
Posted in Banking, Economy, Geithner, obama, TARP, tagged Corruption, FDIC, Game Theory, Housing Bubble, Housing Crisis, Inflation, MBS, Treasury on 25 Mar 2009 | Leave a Comment »
There are probably a million ways to game the Geithner bailout plan, just as the TARP has already led to various unintended consequences, such as the continued provision of generous bonuses by AIG and the Merrill Lynch purchase by BofA. James Galbraith has a good article on this today. The whole premise of the bailout [...]
Leverage on Top of Leverage: The Geithner Plan
Posted in Bailouts, Economy, obama, Rhetoric, tagged John Hussman, Sixty Minutes, TARP, Tim Geithner on 24 Mar 2009 | 2 Comments »
John Hussman presents a cogent explanation of what Tim Geithner’s brilliant plan amounts to: Last week, the Federal Reserve announced its intention to purchase a trillion dollars worth of Treasury debt by creating the little pieces of paper in your pocket that have “Federal Reserve Note” inscribed at the top. In effect, the Fed intends [...]
Obama: Floundering Fast
Posted in Economy, obama on 5 Mar 2009 | 10 Comments »
I used to be somewhat impressed with Obama as a politician. But it seems increasingly clear that he’s an empty suit. For starters, his foreign policy rhetoric and strategy are a mess. He’s recently insulted Britain for no apparent reason. He’s pushing for an expanded campaign in Afghanistan, even though it resembles in every relevant [...]
Bailout News
Posted in Bailout, Economy, Housing Crisis, obama on 3 Mar 2009 | 10 Comments »
Great piece on how the entire bailout is one collossal waste of money and example of “throwing good money after bad.” For example, the pledged total bailout funds pf $8T exceed the entire market cap of the S&P 500. Wow. Useful collection of bearish charts. While a certain optimism has its place, the naive hope [...]
Fear the Angry Taxpayer
Posted in debt, Economy, Politiccs on 7 Feb 2009 | 5 Comments »
Amen. I think lots of apolitical and conservative people are very skeptical of the stimulus, even if they’ll tolerate “bad banks” and other measures to avoid systemic problems in the trust-based financial infrastructure on which all credit depends. Politics is no longer just the plaything of a few public intellectuals, news junkies, and military families; [...]
Free Trade and National Independence
Posted in Economy, Free Trade, Globalization, tagged China, Davos, Davos Man, Egypt, Harold Myerson, Mexico, Washington Post on 31 Jan 2009 | 2 Comments »
I’ve long thought the Republican obsession with free trade was not only bad politics but a bit of bad policy. A recent Washington Post article asks the question whether trade–which had a lot to do with our lopsided economy, as US dollars overseas filtered back looking for a safe investment and found it in Mortgage-Backed-Securities–has [...]
The Robber Barrons of Merrill, et al.
Posted in Bailout, Economy, Wall Street on 31 Jan 2009 | 6 Comments »
There is a view shared by a minority of elite Republicans that it’s wrong to criticize the bonuses and other spending of banks and financial institutions that took TARP funds, particularly now that the heat is on following the classy moves of John Thain of Merrill and the idiotic Ken Lewis of Bank of America [...]
An Unbelievable Spending Spree
Posted in Economy, Great Depression, obama, Politics on 13 Jan 2009 | 3 Comments »
One thing Obama did learn from Bush’s playbook was that it’s easier to amass power and avoid unpopularity by kicking the can down the road and spending big with deficits. I’m presently enjoying Amity Shlaes Great Depression study, The Forgotten Man, and it’s stunning how little the “Roosevelt spent our way out of the Depression” [...]
The Wall Street Swamp
Posted in Culture, Economy, tagged Bailout, Fraud, Fukuyama, Liar's Poker, Maddoff, Michael Douglas, Trust, Wall Street, WASPs on 15 Dec 2008 | 12 Comments »
Wall Street will always be greedy and profit-minded. That is a given. But the extent of the rot is really alarming. The failure of all forms of regulation–internal, public, and market-based, such as bond-rating agencies–will leave a cloud over capital markets for some time. The fearlessness by participants suggests that non-market considerations–friendships, loyalty, ethnic and [...]
Political Consequences of the Economic Crisis
Posted in Austrian Economics, Economy, Election, Housing Crisis, McCain, obama, Politics, Von Mises on 8 Oct 2008 | 12 Comments »
I think this is a useful observation by Mark Thornton over at the Mises blog: On top of all that, people suffer psychological consequences as well. The people most involved in the bubble are confident, jubilant, and self-assured by their apparently successful decision making. When the bubble bursts they lose confidence, go into despair and [...]
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