Robert Waldmann reads Eric Dash and Julie Creswell who argue that Citibank took insane risks holding CDOs on its books, because of a failure of the fixed incomes risk management team, reckless ‘short termism’ and two amazing mistakes. The two alleged mistakes are that they trusted the ratings agencies and that they assumed that the […]
Robert Waldmann Matthey Yglesias points to an old mediamatters.com report which attempts to demolish the center right nation claim. I think the report is a precious resource as it collects the relevant data. Previously I found myself wasting a lot of time searching pollingreport.com. I have some thoughts on the report after the jump. update: […]
Emanuele Millemaci and Robert Waldmann This paper focuses on two main issues. First, we find that, on average, households’ discount rates decline. This implies dynamically inconsistent preferences. Second, we calculate an indicator of the degree of dynamic inconsistency that may help us to understand how households overcome their self-control problems. We use a micro data […]
Robert Waldmann has some concern that, having been elected President of the USA with a brown skin and middle name Hussein, Barack Obama is looking for a real challenge. He is known to be much interested in “Team of Rivals” wants Hillary Clinton to be Secretary of State and Joe Lieberman to impartially investigate whether […]
by Robert Waldmann In my teens when I learned of the existence of credit rating agencies I wondered why private firms with such power weren’t corrupt. Why don’t firms pay bribes to obtain high credit ratings ? I still don’t know the answer but I think that the key is that the ratings are determined […]
Robert Waldmann is reading the article everyone is reading by Michael Lewis on what went wrong. My jaw just dropped. Long long ago, I wondered how bond rating agencies could be so powerful without being corrupted. For months I have wondered how they could get ratings so wrong (and assumed it wasn’t corruption). I’d guessed […]
By Robert Waldmann Paul Krugman writes Max Baucus — Max Baucus! — is leading the charge on a health care plan that, at least at first read, is more like Hillary Clinton’s than Barack Obama’s; that is, it looks like an attempt at full universality. (The word I hear, by the way, is that Obama’s […]
by Robert WaldmannJeff Girth asks “Was AIG Watchdog Not Up To The Job?” Short answer — no.Slightly longer answer — that depends, do you think their job was to regulate or to make sure that no one else regulated ? They seemed to think it was the second and managed. In 1999, Congress passed legislation […]
Robert Waldmann asked Felix Salmon a question in a comment at Market Movers. He just responded by AIM (hey does that mean I’m on Felix Salmon’s AIM friends list ? sure does and all I had to do was download and install AIM). felixsalmon (8:31:29 PM): But I’m interested in a comment you left on […]
Robert Waldmann Matthew Yglesias is very smart, but he is not omniscient. In particular he doesn’t remember things that happened before he was born and it appears that he has fallen for some Republican propaganda. He writes In the late 1970s, it just so happened to be the case that the structure of Great Society […]