Posts tagged…Financial
“What is to be done?”
Sat, Apr 11 2009Lenin recommended it. Now Simon Johnson moves from blaming the elites to organizing against them.
"We have to break up any bank that's 'too big to fail' so that we can have a functional free market. We need serious reform that fixes the root causes in our political and economic system: excessive influence of banks, dangerous compensation systems, and massive consolidation that does nothing to…
Read more…The Quiet Coup
Sun, Mar 29 2009If you can't let the banks fail and won't take over their assets, they own you.
"[W]e face at least two major, interrelated problems. The first is a desperately ill banking sector that threatens to choke off any incipient recovery that the fiscal stimulus might generate. The second is a political balance of power that gives the financial sector a veto over public policy [owing to the Geitner…
Evidence that shorting ban “a mistake”
Wed, Feb 11 2009Reactive policies adopted because the regulators have a ‘hunch’ they’re right are frequently wrong. So, it now seems, with the ban that ASIC imposed on short-selling stocks—a common and prudent risk hedge—because, they said, it would lead to “unwarranted price fluctuations” in financial stocks.
Whatever that means: the regulator never explained to us what was ‘unwarranted’ about falls in the…
Sub-prime not a failure of ‘globalization’
Thu, Jul 17 2008I noted my disagreement with Dani Rodrik's view that the 'sub-prime' loans crisis signalled a failure of international coordination in financial market regulation. Here's an historian of the Federal Reserve who more accurately identifies the origins of the crisis.
"So what can taxpayers expect from an increase in the Fed's discretionary authority over investment banks? The likely answer is…