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Marc Chandler, Global Head of Currency Strategy at Brown Brothers Harriman has an alarming note out this morning on economic policy.  I take notice because Chandler usually writes in more nuanced and non-apocalyptic tones.  For example, he begins:
The risks are asymmetrical.  Many of the world’s national economies, in various stages of recovery, are still highly [...]

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Edward Hugh here. This is a post which was originally published at A Fistful of Euros.
Well, the Spanish government are due to announce their 2009 fiscal deficit number this morning, together with their adjustment plan for reducing the annual fiscal deficit to below 3% of GDP by 2013. This rather distasteful news will be presented [...]

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This is a great graphic showing the money and asset flows in the AIG bailout that makes it far easier to understand why people are calling the AIG bailout a backdoor bailout of AIG’s counterparties.  Take a look.

Source
CHART OF THE DAY: How The AIG Bailout REALLY Worked – Clusterstock

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I just received this document from an interested reader. It is a request by Congressman Darrell Issa for a subpoena to be issued in order to facilitate the investigation surrounding the AIG cover-up. Apparently, evidence has now surfaced about Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke’s role in the AIG saga that is germane to this issue. [...]

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In November 2008, the SEC approved a request by American International Group (AIG) to keep secret until November 2018 documents which reveal securities behind the brewing scandal over its bailout by the Federal Reserve.
A copy of the SEC’s order revealed that the SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance ordered this "excluded information" not to be [...]

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I love this quote from Thaler on how, when and why the economics profession will change:
Thaler: What is the old line—that science progresses funeral by funeral? Nobody changes their mind.
What will happen is that the economists [in their thirties and forties] are pretty open to these ideas. They don’t think it is very controversial. That’s [...]

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The Senate Republicans are making procedural maneuvers to delay the Bernanke confirmation for re-appointment as Fed chair (hat tip Marc Chandler).  There is talk of a filibuster being used as a tactic to squelch his nomination before his term expires at the end of the month.  The interesting bit is that Bernanke is a Republican [...]

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This is a post which I originally published at New Deal 2.0.
Ed mentioned yesterday in his post Credit crises, market equilibrium, economic policy and fiat currencies that both the neoclassicals and the Obama Administration believe the financial crisis has been some sort of temporary liquidity crisis; fix the financial plumbing and it’s business as usual [...]

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In the wake of news about President Obama’s new Too Big to Fail Tax and Barry Ritholtz’s post on it, I had an in-depth conversation on the issue with a whole group of people, including Barry. Most of the group was all for the tax.  I am not, as I recently laid out in an [...]

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In handwriting:

Note that there should be no discussion or suggestion that AIG and the NY Fed are asking to structure anything else at this point.

It will be enlightening to hear him explain what this statement means. See also Tim Geithner "Protects America From Itself" By Forcing Elimination Of Material AIG Disclosure at Zero Hedge. There [...]