Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

SEC capture…

Yves Smith at NC: The SEC showed its true colors yet again at a panel at Stanford Law School at the end of March, although not as dramatically as last year. In last spring’s SEC panel at Stanford, the then head of examinations, Andrew Bowden, made such fawning remarks about private equity, including repeatedly saying […]

All in one day of reporting…

This is just one days reporting from various sources. I thought I would pass them along. On the face of it perhaps the story line is clearer to even regular folk: JPMorgan Said to Hire Ex-SEC Enforcement Chief McLucas for Loss ProbeBy Joshua Gallu and Dawn Kopecki JPMorgan Chase & Co., the biggest U.S. bank, […]

Does A Very Strange Distribution Lead to a Sacrifice in the Hope of a More Interesting Endgame?

Brad DeLong notes an experiment subject (as is the wont of the Obama Administration to date) to regulatory capture: In a surprising move, the Obama administration will extend special bonus payments meant to reward top-performing Medicare Advantage insurers to those that score only average ratings….The law says bonuses, which start in 2012, would go to […]

And Next Mark Will Ask for A Pony

Slowly moving back into everything, and so catching up with Mark Thoma’s use of Paul Volcker as his latest line of Defense of Giving the Fed More Regulatory Power. (Amusing in itself, given Volcker’s description of the Fed before he was Owned by the Obama Administration.) I like Thoma (a lot more than he likes […]

Geithner’s Baa Humbug to Jobs and Labor

Geithner’s Baa Humbug to Job’s and Labor (h/t Run75441) “Ebenezer: Since you ask me what I wish sir, that is my answer. I help to support the establishments I have named; those who are badly off must go there.” Daniel Gross at Slate interviews Tim Geithner here: “We Will Be Judged on How We Dealt […]

Much to My Amazement

UPDATE: It gets even stranger. The bankrupt-since-October-2008 Lehman Brothers is going to pay $50,000,000 in bonuses for this year. (h/t alea’s Twitter feed) It appears all of the “gosh, we really made a lot of money from bailing out rich bankers who socked it to their customers” rhetoric is having a small problem in the […]

Hoisted from Comments (thought not here)

UPDATE: D-Squared chimes in, saying in less than 100 words what took me a couple of thousand (though with no quotes): After the “first hundred days” in the term of a new Democratic President comes the next stage; the almost impreceptible transition among his supporters from saying “of course, he’s been hampered by all sorts […]

I Be Officially Right of Center Now?

As I am arguing on the same side as Henry Kaufman, and against the kind-hearted Mark Thoma, does the phrase “left-of-center” at the top of this blog have as much Memory Meaning as the Suzanne Vega song from Pretty in Pink? Kaufman: During the Greenspan years (1987-2006), the Fed clearly failed to recognize the significance […]