Category Archives: Credit markets

Frontline Takes Issue With Our Critique of Its “Money, Power & Wall Street” Shows

I received this e-mail last week. I will issue my rebuttal Tuesday during the day. Check back in then!

Economists, Liquidity Mongers and the Banker Assault on Financial Reform

This has been a bad stretch for advocates of financial reform – and therefore for the economy as a whole. One after the other, new financial regulations contained in the Dodd-Frank law are being gutted or delayed by regulators and Congress, while the bankers – escorted by a phalanx of paid economists, lawyers and lobbyists – are squealing “wee, wee, wee” all the way home.

Draghi Departs the Solar System

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.

Last night the ECB met in Barcelona and once again held on rates. Mario Draghi opening statement is below. As I have spoken about many times previously I considers Mario Draghi’s statement about what is happening in Europe to be a view from some other planet.

Philip Pilkington: Inflation-Targeting Experiment May Start in Japan… But at What Cost?

By Philip Pilkington, a writer and journalist based in Dublin, Ireland. You can follow him on Twitter at @pilkingtonphil

Rumors abound that a deal is fomenting in Japan that might lead to the inflation targeting proposal that so many progressives champion on their blogs being put in place.

Is Wells Fargo a Lehman in the Making?

Banking maven Chris Whalen has a must-read piece on the reckless real estate risk taking underway at Wells Fargo, the sanctimonious #4 bank.

Dan Kervick: The Astonishing Case of the Impenetrable Zero Bound

Yves here. I rather like the storytelling format of this post.

By Dan Kervick, who does research in decision theory and analytic metaphysics. Cross posted from New Economic Perspectives

In a small, peaceful town there once lived three people: Abbie, Baker and Carlie.

Satyajit Das: The European Debt Crisis Redux

By Satyajit Das, derivatives expert and the author of Extreme Money: The Masters of the Universe and the Cult of Risk Traders, Guns & Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives – Revised Edition (2006 and 2010). Jointly posted with Roubini Global Economics

The half-life of solutions to Europe’s debt problem is getting ever shorter.

Recent hopes have relied on the ostensible success of the European Central Bank’s (“ECB”) LTRO – Long Term Refinancing Operation, more appropriately termed the Lourdes Treatment and Resuscitation Option.

Frontline’s Astonishing Whitewash of the Crisis

Several of my savviest readers wrote expressing disappointment and consternation with the Frontline series on the crisis, “Money, Power, and Wall Street.” The first two parts of the four part series have been released, and it’s probably safe to say that this program is far enough along to be beyond redemption.

Pavlina Tcherneva: No, Mr. Krugman, Bernanke’s Conundrum is Completely Different

By Pavlina Tcherneva, Assistant Professor of Economics at Franklin and Marshall College, Research Scholar at The Levy Economics Institute, and Senior Research Associate at the Center for Full Employment and Price Stability. Cross posted from New Economic Perspectives

Our mainstream colleagues keep banging their heads against the wall. “Why, oh why wouldn’t Chairman Bernanke do more to rescue the economy?” Today Paul Krugman took on this question again, arguing that Chairman Bernanke should listen to Professor Bernanke who had far more sensible ideas about rescuing an economy from a deflationary environment, as seen in his research on Japan during the 90s.

Krugman revisits a 2000 paper by then professor Bernanke, which many of us have scrutinized before, titled “Japanese Monetary Policy: A Case of Self-Induced Paralysis?” Krugman faults Bernanke for not following his own advice…..

The difference is that, unlike Paul Krugman, I actually read Bernanke’s paper from start to finish.

The ECB is on Mars

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 http://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2012/04/spain-has-only-denial/“>MacroBusiness.

Overnight the president of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, gave a speech to the Hearing at the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs of the European Parliament. The speech was not particularly out of line with what Mr Draghi usually says…

Fed Paper on Repo Exposes Inadequacy of Financial Reforms

I’m late to write on a terrific and largely unnoticed paper presented at the Federal Reserve Board’s research conference on “Central Banking: Before, During and After the Crisis” in late March (hat tip Michael C). “A Proposal for the Resolution of Systemically Important Assets and Liabilities: The Case of the Repo Market” by Viral V. Acharya and T. Sabri Öncu could be more accurately titled, “What Financial Reform Missed.”

Daniel Alpert: Earth to Paul Krugman

By Daniel Alpert, the founding Managing Partner of Westwood Capital. Cross posted from EconoMonitor

This past Sunday, Paul Krugman penned a screed in the New York Times Magazine (entitled, somewhat unflatteringly in my opinion, “Earth to Ben Bernanke”) that expanded on the content of an ongoing debate in the economics blogosphere over the contents of the mind of Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke.

Professor Krugman has posited for months now that Bernanke has come up short…..

Philip Pilkington: Matt Yglesias’ Plan to Seize Your Savings for the Good of the Economy

By Philip Pilkington, a writer and journalist based in Dublin, Ireland. You can follow him on Twitter at @pilkingtonphil

“Oh no! This is going to get silly!” That’s what I thought when I read the first few lines of Matthew Yglesias’ post on how, in a cashless economy central banks would be able to ‘cure’ recessions.