Category Archives: Credit cards

Cyprus: The Next Blunder

Yves here. Our post today on Cyprus provides some broad background, including the political dynamics and the not-terribly-defensible reasons the Eurozone went that route, and a short discussion of the large risk that this inept move precipitates a wider crisis. This article by Charles Wyplosz serves as a companion, since it discusses the “tax,” um, expropriation option versus other alternatives. Even more important, it sketches out why this scheme, even if it manages not to kick off a crisis, is still inadequate to rescue Cyprus. It is thus a toxic variant of the Eurozone “kick the can down the road” strategy.

Minimum Wage Households That Get Pay Increases Typically Increase Their Borrowing Even More

The debate around Obama’s proposed minimum wage increase (when he had promised to deliver an even bigger wage rise in his first term) focuses mainly around how much economic stimulus it will provide and whether it will simply lead employers to cut worker hours (given how obscene corporate profits are, most companies have plenty of room to pay their employees more, even if their kvetching would lead you to believe otherwise. Remember, companies used to share the benefits of productivity gains with workers; it was in the later 1990s they started keeping the upside all for themselves). But a look at that question reveals what low wage workers do when they get pay increases.

Student Loan Bubble So Big It’s Trumping Credit Cards as a Spending Driver

It turns out Lambert’s mother-in-law research is pretty good.

Appeals Court Ruling May Nullify Consumer Finance Protection Bureau Rulemakings

A ruling by the Washington, DC federal appeals court in Noel Canning v. NLRB pretty much ends the ability of presidents to make recess appointments, a measure that has been used since 1867. The suit successfully challenged a NLRB rulemaking on the grounds that three of the five directors were recess appointments which meant the NLRB lacked a quorum to give it authority to act.

Is There a Case for Optimism About the Eurozone?

I know, we don’t generally do optimism here at Naked Capitalism. And truth be told, I’m having trouble accepting the Financial Times’ John Dizard’s argument that things are going to get better in the Eurozone. Admittedly, John has a taste for investing on the wild side: he’s typically recommending exotic trades in his weekly column. But his argument isn’t based on catching a near-term trading bounce; it’s based on…..fundamentals.

Spain Worse

By Delusional Economics, who is horrified at the state of economic commentary in Australia and is determined to cleanse the daily flow of vested interests propaganda to produce a balanced counterpoint. Cross posted from MacroBusiness

As I wrote early last week Antonis Samaras was to spend much of the weekend in talks with Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande about the future of his nation. As the Telegraph pointed out yesterday the results were, as expected, unconvincing:

Judge: 90% of Credit Card Lawsuits Can’t Prove Borrower Owes Money

Credit card debt collection may achieve the dubious distinction of making mortgage servicers look good.

FHFA Threatens to Kneecap Use of Eminent Domain to Condemn Mortgages

All this talk of firing Ed DeMarco seems to have led him to decide to live up to his reputation.

Yanis Varoufakis: Draghi Greatly Diminished the Office of the ECB, Sacrificed the Fiscal/Monetary Distinction, and Didn’t Do Much for the Euro While He Was At It

By Yanis Varoufakis, Professor of Economics at the University of Athens. Cross posted from his blog

First came the impressive declarations: The ECB will do whatever is necessary to ensure that those who go short on the euro, who bet on its disintegration, will lose. “And, believe me”, he added “it will be enough”. He also, rather significantly, uttered the term ‘convertibility risk’ (code-words for the risk that funds kept in some part of the Eurozone will be forcefully converted to some new, devalued, currency) and pledged to eradicate it. No wonder, the markets responded with considerable enthusiasm.

Then came the moment to put up or forever lose his credibility. Alas, probably under incredible pressure from the Bundesbank, he opted for the latter.

New Zealand’s Savings & Loans Companies: Not Like Any Banking Industry You’ve Ever Seen Before

Yet more gems from New Zealand’s Company Register: the companies that specialize in scamming Americans

Michael Hudson: Paul Krugman’s Economic Blinders

By Michael Hudson, a research professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City and a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. His new book summarizing his economic theories, “The Bubble and Beyond,” will be available in a few weeks on Amazon.

Paul Krugman is widely appreciated for his New York Times columns criticizing Republican demands for fiscal austerity. He rightly argues that cutting back public spending will worsen the economic depression into which we are sinking. And despite his partisan Democratic Party politicking, he said from the outset in 2009 that President Obama’s modest counter-cyclical spending program was not sufficiently bold to spur recovery.

The Hidden Bank Time Bomb: Interest Rate Risk

At the Atlantic Economy Summit in Washington last month, Sheila Bair fielded a question about the just-released results of the latest bank stress tests. The former FDIC chief took pains to point out that they were an improvement over earlier iterations by virtue of keying off a truly dire economic scenario, but then ticked off a number of ways in which they fell short.