Yves here. Readers may recall that Gary Gensler, the head of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, is being pushed out by Obama. His planned replacement is so appallingly lightweight (oh, and formerly in a very junior role at Goldman) as to assure that all she’ll be able to do is take dictation from financial firm lobbyists.
But Gensler may be having a last laugh before he leaves office.
Read more...By Sasha Breger, a lecturer at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver and author of the recent book Derivatives and Development. Her research includes global finance, derivatives, social policy, food, and farming. Cross posted from Triple Crisis
In my last two posts (http://triplecrisis.com/a-great-sucking-sound-part-2/, http://triplecrisis.com/a-great-sucking-sound-part-1/), I addressed the roles of debt, farmland acquisition, and physical commodity hoarding in helping finance siphon wealth from global agriculture. In this final post, I discuss the role of derivatives and insurance markets in this redistributive process.
Read more...Does anybody have a clear vision of the desirable financial system of the future?
Read more...Now before anyone gets excited about the specter of bankers doing a perp walk, the early word in a Wall Street Journal story on criminal charges being readied against former Barclays bankers says that the prosecutions will target “midlevel traders.” This exercise thus continues the established pattern of small fry serving as human shields for managers and executives.
Read more...It’s hard to know where to begin with a story up at the Wall Street Journal, Risk-Averse Culture Infects U.S. Workers, Entrepreneurs.
Read more...Yesterday, bonds fell sharply due to stronger-than-expected housing price and consumer confidence reports. That reflects the belief that the economy is mending, and as a result, the Fed will deliver on its promise to dial back and then end QE. Ten year Treasury yields rose to the 2.10%-2.11% level. Various commentators claim that rates will zoom higher either right over that point or at 2.25%. How worried should we be?
Read more...There’s a surprising degree of blogosphere acceptance of JP Morgan’s messaging on the shareholder vote today regarding whether to split the CEO and Chairman roles, that this result was a vote of confidence in his prowess as CEO. Huh?
Read more...By Gaius Pubius, a professional writer living on the West Coast. Follow him on Twitter @Gaius_Publius. Cross posted from AmericaBlog
We know that global warming will cause some crises, since the little warming we’ve experienced so far (0.8°C or so) is already a problem. But according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the leading scientific organization studying this phenomenon, this is only the beginning. What’s the temperature we should stop at if we don’t want to cause another world-class extinction?
Read more...Yves here. Like Black, I see Brown-Vitter as well-intended but seriously flawed.
Read more...Aircraft maintenance was a highly paid blue-collar job that required education, training, manual skills, and brains. It was one of the perfect American middle-class jobs with generous healthcare, retirement, and vacation benefits; and free flights! They were working for icons like Delta, American Airlines, Continental, TWA, or Pan Am. Icons indeed!
Read more...Given the lameness of the bible of psychological diagnostics, the DSM, it’s pretty easy for the lay public to play armchair psychologist, particularly in the realm of organizational behavior.
Read more...The great unwashed public might get to enjoy a bit of theater.
Read more...Yves here. This is an important post, in that it describes how the Fed, despite the unconventional look of some of its measures, is using more extreme variants of traditional policy approaches, and why that is not such a hot idea.
Read more...Not surprisingly, Sheila Bair was appalled by the revelations from Carl Levin’s hearings on the JP Morgan London Whale losses. She discusses not only what it says about the bank, but about the state of regulation in the US.
Read more...It would be ironic if Cyprus, one the smallest countries in Europe with little over 1 million people and about 0.5% of the European Union (“EU”) economically, were to prove a key inflexion point in the crisis.
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