Did no one in Georgia pay attention in the 1980s? It’s not just reputations that are on the line. Board members, also known as directors, could be held personally liable for a bank’s demise. Experts are expecting a wave of lawsuits against directors to be filed in Georgia over the next year or two as […]

Ken Houghton notes the plural in the title, which was written not by me rather by the FRB Atlanta, which sponsored a conference of that name, hosted by David Altig of Macroblog fame (and now an SVP at the Atlanta Fed). Here is the page for presentation links.

Meet the New Boss; Same as the Old Boss. Andrew Sullivan points out the obvious link from yesterday’s appointment to today’s “reversal“: It was a point of pride that the Red Cross would never be allowed in the door, Jeff says. This is important because it defied the Geneva Conventions, which require that the Red […]

Ken Houghton finds someone who is more pessimistic than I am. Via Bankimplode.com News, I see that Martin D. Weiss, Ph.D., has come up with a list of Large Banks Likely to Fail: Seven institutions — JPMorgan Chase & Co., Citigroup, Wells Fargo & Co., Goldman Sachs Group, GMAC LLC, SunTrust Banks, Inc., and Fifth […]

The next time someone tells you that “the banks need help,” just refer them to Barry Ritholtz: Talk about burying the lead: The Times also noted — in the very last paragraphs — how the big incompetent banks and their very pricey bailouts are screwing these small healthy banks: “Isn’t that the American way?” [Donald […]

In the matter of externalities, accusing political enemies of being terrorists even after they are cleared of all wrongdoing is a feature of having economic power.* Good thing it’s not being done by a country G-Mu dislikes, or we’d hear about this at Marginal Revolution. But they’re too busy arguing that the Greenspan Commission were […]

Dear Philadelphia Inquirer, I also am a native of the City of Brotherly Love. The last two firms at which I have worked have lost billions of dollars. While I admit that—unlike your latest columnist—I am not responsible for that happening, I believe this qualifies me to write a monthly column for you. While I […]

Via Brad DeLong, I see Time magazine has identified the “25 people to ‘blame’ for the financial crisis.” [my sarcastic quotes on blame; Time appears to be serious] Amazingly, none of TWX’s (mostly former) top management—who pushed LBOs in the 1980s and Internet bubbles in the 1990s—makes on the list. More amazingly, Lew Ranieri is […]

What do you mean “we’re broke”? The first encouraging sign in a long time from the Fed and the Treasury is in the link above. After it became common knowledge that the “stress tests” were only going to be window dressing, the question on everyone’s mind became only “How much more is it going to […]

Via djw at LG&M and Echidne, the original sentence: Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron. The it’s-not-the-stupidity-it’s-the-coverup “explanation” from the editor: [Thiel] writes only that […]