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

Simon Johnson on Barclay’s and markets

Simon Johnson at Baseline Scenario points to basic fraud on the business practices for LIBOR: The behavior at Barclays has all the hallmarks of fraud, pure and simple – intentional deception for personal gain, causing significant damage to others. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission nailed the detailed mechanics of this deception in plain English in […]

Euro area troubles, banks, and sovereign debt connections

Economist Mark Blyth talks on Europe and rescuing the banks… See 35 minutes in on context for LIBOR troubles. (70% of the special investment vehicles designed to pump and dump mortgages belong to European not American banks … Euro banks listed their periphery debt as Tier One Capital under Basel.)

Paul Krugman is Very, Very Wrong

by Mike Kimel Update …Since this post has gotten a lot of attention, jump here for myfinal word on this topic. I’m sure I’m missing something here, because Paul Krugman is so often extremely perceptive, but I think here he is very, very wrong. He writes: The naive (or deliberately misleading) version of Fed policy […]

Obama road tests hopey changey 2.0

Yves Smith spells out her strong opinion of our dilemma nationally for the elections of 2012. This particular arena of regulating banks and non banks and and accountability also takes on a wider symbolic meaning in this election cycle. How this plays out in determining national budget spending priorities through the lens of an explosion […]

A Brain-Dead "Financial Reporter" at NPR Defines the Problem

Via Doctor Black, who printed the answer but not the question: PIGNAL: This is actually the second bailout for Dexia. In 2008, it had to be bailed out after exceptionally imprudent investing, including in U.S. subprime mortgages. This time around, it was basically dealing with the legacy of the past, and it was trying to […]

When S != I

As Brad DeLong has noted, Tim Geithner believes it is time for “the economy has now recovered sufficiently for government to begin to make way for private business investment.”  In short, he expects “the private sector” to do the heavy lifting in these joyous times of economic recovery. Cynics among us—why, yes, that might well […]

Economists = Idiots? Part 1829

It was their idea, so it’s no surprise they like paying interest on reserves, even excess reserves: For quite a while, the Fed was quite happy to have that money on its books. Indeed, the power to pay interest on reserves was considered a key tool to keep control over all the liquidity the Fed […]

Catch-Up Links

I have been a Bad Blogger this week. (As opposed to my usual practice, which seems to be described as Blogging Badly.) While I intend to continue the New Tradition (think of me as Waylon, without the speed), following are Snow Day Links: D-Squared was on fire on Wednesday: both Bank Lending Channel and The […]

Heavy Flow (not an iPad post)

Was 2009 a great year to be a bank? The headlines all say so. (The 140 U.S. banks that were closed by the FDIC last year may disagree some.) But, as Isabelle Kaminska of Alphaville notes, very little of the gains posted for last year came from anything related to talent: Deutsche Bank reported net […]