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Robert Johnson, director of the Economic Policy Initiative of the Roosevelt Institute, has been extremely critical of the US Government’s handling of matters related to financial services.
This past October 7, he gave testimony at the House of Representatives financial Services Committee expressing some of his concerns.  Not only was his testimony cut short, but [...]

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This comes via the FT:
Saudi Arabia on Wednesday decided to drop the widely used West Texas Intermediate oil contract as the benchmark for pricing its oil, dealing a serious blow to the New York Mercantile Exchange.
The decision by the world’s biggest oil exporter could encourage other producers to abandon the benchmark and threatens the [...]

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I just came across a post on Zero Hedge called “An Overview Of The Fed’s Intervention In Equity Markets Via The Primary Dealer Credit Facility.” Now, that’s a mouthful. As far as I can discern, the post’s purpose is to expose alleged equities market manipulation by the Federal Reserve. However, I found the argument rather [...]

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You are a teacher at a local primary school. Each school day you and some of your colleagues watch over the children at the school playground to make sure all of the children follow the rules and keep their hands to themselves. Your role is to keep the children safe. Mind you, this is a [...]

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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, [...]

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Janet Tavakoli was a recent guest on “On the Edge with Max Keiser” and had some troubling things to say about the state of the present U.S. financial system. 
She believes the liquidity pumped into the system will not be sufficient to reflate the economy because of over-leveraged U.S. households. The real burden of debt [...]

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Marshall Auerback here. This is a cross-post from an article I wrote at the finance site New Deal 2.0, a one-stop-shop for current news, sharp analysis and potential solutions of the country’s fiscal crisis.
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again. As a matter of national accounting, the domestic private sector cannot increase savings [...]

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I am astounded at how quickly we have returned to the pre-crisis days of yore. Credit spreads are down, the stock market is up, volatility is down, earnings are up and bonuses are up.  It looks like happy days are here again.
But, I can’t help thinking this is all too much and too soon.  It’s [...]

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Marshall Auerback here. I have been posting at an interesting new site called New Deal 2.0. You may have seen Edward linking out to articles on the site.
Edward saw an article I wrote there recently and asked me to post it here as well to highlight a recurrent theme at Credit Writedowns – namely that [...]

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Bloomberg News is writing a very worthy series of retrospective articles on the financial panic of September 2008.  I profiled the first one on Monday.  The next in the series came out yesterday and it makes for riveting and enlightening reading.
Bloomberg News reporters Bob Ivry, Mark Pittman and Christine Harper talked to a large [...]