Recent Articles
Obama Administration propaganda on prosecuting elite financial frauds
The Obama administration’s record of prosecuting elite financial frauds is worse than the Bush administration’s record, which is a very large statement. Neither administration has prosecuted any elite CEO for the epidemic of mortgage fraud that drove the ongoing crisis. This contrasts with over 1,000 elite felony convictions arising from the S&L debacle. The ongoing crisis caused losses more than 70 times greater than the S&L debacle and the amount of elite fraud driving this crisis is also vastly greater than during the S&L debacle
Dollar Mixed as Spain raises 4.5 bn euros in bond auction
The dollar is currently mixed against the majors and EMs as asset markets consolidate near recent highs. Spain raised 4.5 bn euros in a bond auction the upper end of their desired range. On the data front, Australia’s December trade surplus exceeded expectations increasing to A$1.71bln in December from a revised A$1.34 bln in November (was A$1.38 bln). Chinese markets outperformed the region closing nearly 2% higher, but the news flow was mixed, and even slightly contradictory
News Links: The perils of Mario Draghi’s €1.5 trillion blitz
News Links for 2 Feb
John Reed on Big Banks and Corporatism
Bill Moyers talks to former Citicorp and Citigroup head John Reed about what’s wrong in the banking sector. John Reed readily acknowledges his role in bringing down the Glass-Steagall Act (Hat tip finance Addict)
More on Banks Making Shed Loads But Fannie And Freddie “Losing Money as a Matter of Policy”
Fannie and Freddie have already been nationalized and the government is already on the hook for hundreds of billions of dollars of losses as a result. Clearly, this makes it a lot easier to use the GSEs as vehicles to pump money into the economy because any incremental loss is completely obscured by the existing gargantuan losses. Fannie and Freddie can essentially become a giant stimulus slush fund for the Obama Administration as we head into the 2012 election
Get Out of Jail Free, European Edition
I was thinking about that last post I wrote on the euro zone and regulatory forbearance. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. So here’s a picture that captures my thinking pretty well
Is the Greek PSI Sweetener Enough?
Even if the private sector participation sufficiently high, will it be enough to put Greece’s debt on a sustainable path? This seems unlikely and there is increasing risk that the ECB forgoes getting anything but its initial investment back
Economics in the Age of Deleveraging
Clearly, economic policy is now far more complex than it appeared to be before the GFC. As we enter this Age of Deleveraging, the worst thing we can do is apply policies that appeared to work during the preceding Age of Leverage—but were in fact predicated on ever-rising private sector indebtedness. Politicians should be sceptical of conventional economic advice at this time; it would be much wiser to study the history of the 1930s instead
A Real Phony
A quote from Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, who centrally controlled and underpriced the most over-leveraged interest rate in the world for 18 years and is now cashing in like a reality TV celebrity
Short Note on ISM Manufacturing Survey
The Institute for Supply Management reports its January manufacturing survey on February 1. The Bloomberg consensus expects a small increase to 54.5 from
The European Sovereign Debt Crisis, the US Savings and Loan Crisis and Regulatory Forbearance
This is me thinking out loud about how regulatory forbearance in the S&L crisis mirrors today’s policy path
News Links 02/01/2012
News links for 1 Feb