Robert Waldmann Angry Bear September 04 2009 Tell reluctant senators and representatives that, if they think their constituents don’t want any public insurance except for medicare and medicaid, then they can refuse to have it. Ezra Klein and Senator Maria Cantwell October 1 2009 EK Can they opt out? MC States can opt out. Senator […]
Robert Waldmann A proposed reform (already shelved) is to require banks to offer “plain vanilla” products. I am very confused about this proposal, so this is a semi bleg. I can’t see any possible benefit from the regulation (probably because I haven’t read the fine print of the draft bill). My thoughts after the jump. […]
Robert Waldmann It would be easy to pass a law that issuers of securities aren’t allowed to pay ratings agencies. One problem is that if purchasers of securities paid for ratings, the ratings would have to be their secret at least for a while. One might add a provision that ratings be made public after […]
Robert Waldmann Neoconservatives have expressed sympathy for “intelligent design theory,” that is, creationism. This is well documented by Ronald Bailey’s article in “Reason on line.” Bailey discusses why neoconservatives might claim they don’t believe in evolution by natural selection even though there is no scientific basis for that view. update: link corrected thanks to VtCodger […]
Probably I accept elimination of the rule that financial companies must offer plain vanilla products for a different reason, since he isn’t as ignorant as I am, but I would think that with a plain vanilly requirement, banks would offer plain vanilla products on terrible terrible terms. 30 year mortgage OK but the interest rate […]
Robert Waldmann Matthew Yglesias is completely mystified by opposition to deficit spending by the public and by Michele Boldrin. I basically agree with him, but I think that he is missing something. In response to public opposition to deficit spending he expresses the Keynesian argument perfectly Thinking about it rationally, the reason to worry about […]
Robert Waldmann OK so Snowe has broken with the other Republicans. After a heated hour-long exchange, Democrats defeated a Republican effort to restore $113 billion in funding for Medicare Advantage, a private insurance program that has been criticized for high costs. All 13 Democrats on the committee were joined by one Republican, Sen. Olympia J. […]
Robert Waldmann Brad DeLong just posted a very interesting Draft Henry George lecture. It contains ideas which I haven’t found written down before by Brad or by Krugman. I strongly recommend reading it (for one thing I don’t know how to cut and paste from it). People who have read the draft lecture are invited […]
Robert Waldmann One brief question about structured finance and a possible answer. Why did investors need financial operators to make pools for them ? Now it is easier to make sense of financial intermediaries which pool than of those which pool and tranche. The obvious explanation is that an investor investing a small amount of […]
Robert Waldmann Still almost fishing from archives, but this time I think the version after the jump is maybe even less incoherant than the old version. Quite a lot of pooling and tranching has been done in the past decade. I think explanations of this fact offered by the tranchers can’t be accurate or at […]