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

"Banks Just Don’t Go Under"

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 […]

Someone whose list of Bad Banks Matches Mine–and Goes Further

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 […]

Reverse Robin Hood applies to banks too

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 […]

Silliness from Time Magazine

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 […]

May Day MayDay

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 […]

I Do Not Think "Tool" Means What You Think It Does

Dear Brad, Do you want to reconsider the title of this post in the context of this article? An examination of Mr. Geithner’s five years as president of the New York Fed, an era of unbridled and ultimately disastrous risk-taking by the financial industry, shows that he forged unusually close relationships with executives of Wall […]

Peter Dorman of Econospeak Writes, So I Don’t Have To

I’m just going to “Go Thoma” on him, since I can’t find anything to cut: Barack Obama tells us we should not investigate American intelligence agents or their overlings who are responsible for torturing hundreds of suspects in their custody. We have to forget about the past, he says, to concentrate our attention on the […]

Capitalism deserves a better defense, or Reasons to Short the Old Firm, Pre-BK

Ken Houghton’s Loyal Reader directed my attention to this WSJ blog entry, commenting on, and attempting to provide cover for, the management and actions of The Old Firm. I’m sympathetic to the general argument—Ace Greenberg’s naming of Jimmy Cayne to succeed him was incredibly bad judgment that had real consequences, but not malice aforethought—but the […]