This is a post I just wrote over at Yves Smith’s site Naked Capitalism in response to a reader request. Marshall Auerback has already written a reply as well and I will post this later today.
A reader at Naked Capitalism asked us to respond to a recent article from the Christian Science Monitor asking Does [...]

I have written extensively about how I believe the bank bailouts were the worst of all possible solutions – fixes that perpetuate too big to fail, moral hazard and crony capitalism.  That ship has sailed, but the questions still linger – in large part because the fix has not trickled down to common folk to [...]

The Obama Administration is captured. To understand why it has acted as it has, one doesn’t have to take the view that its efforts to save the banking industry were a deliberate attempt to line bankers’ pockets by transferring money from taxpayers to the banking industry. One need merely read the last post I wrote [...]

I was reading Kid Dynamite’s account of the recent Treasury – Finance Blogger meeting after having read a bunch of others (see them all in Abnormal Returns’ Nov 4th links). And I was struck by his characterization of the thinking at Treasury in regards to the financial crisis. I want to highlight two points and [...]

At the weekend I wrote about Alistair Darling’s about-face on breaking up to big to fail financial institutions. Apparently, this was not a case of labour changing tack and finding regulatory religion, but rather of the European Union imposing its will on the British government. The EU is also dictating policy in Germany, the Netherlands [...]

If you have been wondering whether a statistical recovery is at hand, today’s ISM manufacturing report should be the clincher.  The report was definitely bullish with the ISM index rising to 55.7 and sub-components supporting the understanding that the manufacturing sector is expanding. This is quite a contrast to last month’s weak data and demonstrates [...]

And you thought the bailouts were over and market discipline might be restored.  Not a chance – the bailouts will continue, come hell or high water. The latest demonstration of this is GMAC, where the government will now be majority owner. GMAC has officially been nationalized. Now the government is running auto financing in addition [...]

This is a post I wrote in response to an ongoing debate about financial crises, credit revulsion and deficit spending over at Naked Capitallism. See the four links in the first paragraph for the precursor articles.
DoctoRx, Rob Parenteau and Marshall Auerback have each written articles here to bring clarity to some issues I first raised [...]

In one of my latest posts I said “greed is not good.” Quite frankly, I looked at this statement as self-evident in the wake of an economic catastrophe where greed was a defining element.  Yet, a remarkable number of people commented in defense of greed; they seem to believe greed is a good thing. So, [...]

Kyle, a long-time reader, recently asked why I think mark-to-market accounting actually matters.  After alI, savvy investors know that accounting does not necessarily change cash flows.  I think his question has a lot to do with not just accounting, but also with the stress tests.
Kyle writes:
My point is that it has really NOT changed, and [...]