You get a long list of links because I found interesting stuff, but none of it really suited to further commentary by yours truly.
Playboy’s playmates may be lonely at Super Bowl XLIII Bloomberg (hat tip reader Ed)
Life after the apocalypse Guardian
twitter.com/alaistairdarling (hat tip reader Tim)
Shire horses on the ‘brink of extinction’ experts warn Telegraph
Global Warming Is Irreversible, Study Says NPR
Japan faces up to the prospect of ‘peak fish’ Financial Times
U.S. Draft Law Would Ban Most Credit-Default Swaps Bloomberg
What Red Ink? Wall Street Paid Hefty Bonuses New York Times
Read Dean, Areddy and Ng on the management of China’s reserves during the crisis Brad Setser. Brad gives the economics take, while China slams U.S. profligacy by Ed Harrison focuses on the political theater (we had noted earlier that while Americans assumed Asia would be pragmatic, commentators were warning that they were much more likely to view the situation as a morality tale and act accordingly).
An Ideological Turf War Mark Thoma
A Letter to the Comptroller of the Currency American Society of Appraisers (hat tip reader Scott) As he reads it, and this seems correct to me, bank regulators are trying to eliminate requirements for written appraisals in connections with cramdowns and refinancings on government backed loans, which are now the bulk of the market.
I Just Don’t Get It Roger Ehrenberg. A man after my own heart
Losing Harvard’s Billions The Big Money (hat tip Felix Salmon)
Messing around with credit Models and Agents. A good critique of the “let’s help housing by making mortgage yields artificially low” plan.
Antidote du jour (hat tip reader Jim):
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The Chinese Premier contrasted this with the major causes of the crisis, which he put down to “inappropriate macroeconomic policies of some economies and their unsustainable model of development, characterised by prolonged low savings and high consumption; excessive expansion of financial institutions in blind pursuit of profit; lack of self-discipline among financial institutions and ratings agencies and ensuing distortion of risk information and asset pricing; and the failure of financial supervision and regulation to keep up with financial innovations, which allowed the risks of financial derivatives to build and spread”.
Without mentioning the US by name…
Ha, Ha, Ha. He didn’t have to mention the US by name, although you could substitute the “West.”
The average Chinese and the average American will probably soon converge in their thinking _ Why aren’t more US bankers being shot in the back of the head?
This might be worth adding, or possibly even a bit of a write-up
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=att.7JO8kTXE&refer=home
U.S. Draft Law Would Ban Most Trading in Credit Swaps (Update1)
“The document, distributed by e-mail by the committee staff in Washington, would also force /U.S. trading in the $684 trillion over-the-counter derivatives market to be processed by a clearinghouse.”
A tax on every transaction in the $684 trillion market could pay taxpayers back in a week, cover social security as far as the eye can see, pay for universal health care, pay decent middle-class wages to military families, educate all, pay high competitive salaries to an oversight agency and jail white collar criminals and traitors.
LeeAnne
…before they’re taken to the guillotine
Re Letter to the Comptroller of the Currency, by the American Society of Appraisers:
So they (the Appraisers) finally
” got religion” ??
Give me a break.
My five cents worth.
“The price of oil, for example, which Harvard and other speculators were storing,”
Harvard deserves a drubbing, not only for their irresponsible support of morally questionable investment philosophies but also for the morally corrupt and mathematically flawed education their financial graduates have displayed.
Even dark clouds can have a silver lining.
Harvard bunglers
“So by the time the bubble burst in the fall of 2008, only a small fraction of the endowment fund investment was even under the jurisdiction of the SEC.”
Some model -for investments and for civil society
Re title that to Harvard wiseguys
..that’s what you get from a generation or two with no respect for history -reinventing the wheel since the ’60s.
“The state comptroller, Thomas P. DiNapoli, said it was unclear if banks had used taxpayer money for the bonuses”
Gee, I dunno. What do you think, Olly ?
The taxpayer money is kept in the right pocket and the private money in the left pocket.
“Scientists have found other indications of global cooling. For one thing there has been a noticeable expansion of the great belt of dry, high-altitude polar winds —the so-called circumpolar vortex—that sweep from west to east around the top and bottom of the world. Indeed it is the widening of this cap of cold air that is the immediate cause of Africa’s drought. By blocking moisture-bearing equatorial winds and preventing them from bringing rainfall to the parched sub-Sahara region, as well as other drought-ridden areas stretching all the way from Central America to the Middle East and India, the polar winds have in effect caused the Sahara and other deserts to reach farther to the south. Paradoxically, the same vortex has created quite different weather quirks in the U.S. and other temperate zones. As the winds swirl around the globe, their southerly portions undulate like the bottom of a skirt. Cold air is pulled down across the Western U.S. and warm air is swept up to the Northeast. The collision of air masses of widely differing temperatures and humidity can create violent storms—the Midwest’s recent rash of disastrous tornadoes, for example.”
Time Magazine – 1974 “Another Ice Age ?”
Those guys were all wet.
good bank bad bank
http://thereformedbroker.com/2009/01/29/good-bank-bad-bank-by-dr-seuss/
I rather liked brad setsers conclusion today.
China for a long time operated its own version of the TARP. The troubled asset it bought in huge quantities in 2007 and the first part of 2008 was the dollar.
The letter to the comptroller of currency is quite scary really and is really a license for people to just make up a number for the valuations of their property.
Instead of promoting safety and soundness by increasing reliance on professional appraisals of real property collateralizing mortgages and mortgage-backed securities, the Guidelines have the unmistakable effect of sanctioning wholesale avoidance of such reliance.
Ed harrison quotes the chinese premier Wen who seems from this quote to be very clued up.Not to be treated in the casual way that Tim did without consequences.
inappropriate macroeconomic policies of some economies and their unsustainable model of development, characterised by prolonged low savings and high consumption; excessive expansion of financial institutions in blind pursuit of profit; lack of self-discipline among financial institutions and ratings agencies and ensuing distortion of risk information and asset pricing;
I Just Don’t Get It
“But how much of this monumental sum will be squandered on projects that have little impact on job creation? How much horse-trading will be done on the floor and between President Obama and Congress to get something, anything, done?”
No economist, to my knowledge, has offered any analysis of what the Multiplier is for a Confressional Corrupt Buck. That is, strip out the Waste, Corruption, Patronage, Influence cost of a CCB and then give the actual real multiplier. That is, if the expenditure had any real value to start. Bridges To Nowhere and legendary War Racket projects do not qualify. They actually have Negative affects.
So when Economists absolutely ignore something as Fundamental as this, yet talk endless claptrap about miniscule measurements and calculations, they expose themselves as either fools or frauds.
Even a Ballpark Analysis of a CCB would indicate a poor Multiplier and the Economist who did such an analysis would have poor employment prospects, just like the thousands of honest RE Appraisers who were intimidated during the great RE boom.
One begins to suspect that there really is no Honest Economist but only ones with their own or others’ vested interests to protect. As these folk prattle on and on, even more Trust and Confifence is lost.
Diogenes would have his work cut out in this discipline. He wouldn’t get it either.
One of the points against regulating derivatives is that 40% of Goldman and Merrill’s profits come from them. What ever will our economy do without Goldman and Merrill’s fat profits? I say unregulated derivatives forever. What’s the worst that could happen?
Its about time that we not only regulate derivatives strictly but make it a crime to trade or even hold any such obligation without the underlying bond being held as well. Make the penalty confiscation for the first offense and thereafter confiscation plus a fine of say, double the face amount of the underlying bond.
This is far from harsh because in fact, these unhinged derivatives are nothing more than gambling at best (think numbers game) and are outright theft at worst (most of the time). So if the perps were not Ivy grads in suits, they’d be thrown in jail.
Not only that — but it solves the real problem that is that pretty much none of the fancy pants ivy diploma bankers actually understand the instruments that they trade and profit from. In the event of a default — assuming they can even read and comprehend the subject instrument’s “default” language and can, in fact, identify a “default”, they have no idea what to do about it.
Please post this link:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123319689681827391.html
* JANUARY 29, 2009
New Bank Bailout Could Cost $2 Trillion
more in Politics »
By DEBORAH SOLOMON, DAVID ENRICH and JON HILSENRATH
WASHINGTON — Government officials seeking to revamp the U.S. financial bailout have discussed spending another $1 trillion to $2 trillion to help restore banks to health, according to people familiar with the matter.
Anon at 8:32
I entirely agree. Wall street must be prosecuted and held accountable. We give way to much prestige to ivy league schools, they must be cut down for people to see that they are charlatans and frauds.
The American people are being robbed blind, 18 billion in bonuses?? For record losses and robbing taxpayers.
Where is the Govt, Why isn’t every Wall Street CEO being investigated for fraud and deception?
:O Wait they are too busy being the lap dog for big banks, DELIBERATELY FUDGING unemployment statistics and generally messing up in everything they do. ]
Brilliant form of Government. I hope there is a Greatest Depression and than the people will wake up to see how they have been robbed and we’ll throw the clowns in power out and consign keynesian and monetarist economics to the rubbish pile of history.
If the stimulus bill is really going to create 4 million jobs than why not simply quadruple it and eliminate unemployment forever? The stimulus bill is going to ensure that a greatest depression is locked in.
“A tax on every transaction in the $684 trillion market could pay taxpayers back in a week, cover social security as far as the eye can see, pay for universal health care, pay decent middle-class wages to military families, educate all, pay high competitive salaries to an oversight agency and jail white collar criminals and traitors”
GREAT IDEA LEE ANN
Best Ive heard on the CDS and derivitives market yet
Way to go let’s hear it for sanity!
About time!
Peterson’s plan “is anti-derivative,” said Mark Williams, a finance professor at Boston University. “Saying you only can trade if you have the physical is like saying you only can write calls if you own the underlying. Imagine what impact that would have on our existing
options market if such a ‘naked’ rule was mandated.”
Onward and upward next stop shut down the options pit
Back to the future! Pre-1973.Nothing made by human decision can’t be undone by human decision.
Harvard: you’d have to have a heart of stone not to laugh.
Might want to divert some of the
gazillion dollar printing party
money and invest in Shires.
A couple of acres and a team
of work horses may not be a bad
idea. Shires before bankers I say.
Look, I can’t get a policy (or twenty) to cover my neighbor’s house burning down. If I were an Ivy League grad, this would give me a big incentive to make sure that placed burned down, especially after going long on the Hang Seng and oil at $150.
These complex, naked wacko derivatives are pure poison. Get rid of them now. The pig-men will argue against this because then they will really be seen as bankrupt physically (they already are morally).