Category Archives: Summer rerun

Summer Rerun: The Fed: The Need for a Paradigm Shift

This post first appeared on May 1, 2007 Due to Paul Volcker’s having broken the back of inflation in the early 1980s, and Alan Greenspan performing what appears to be adequately on the substance of his job and masterfully at the showmanship, the Fed’s reputation is at an all time high. And that in and […]

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Summer Rerun: Market Failure I: “Money-Driven Medicine”

This post first appeared on April 16, 2007 I always take note when a writer takes a position that is contrary to his usual stance. Tyler Cowen of Marginal Revolution is an intelligent and thoughtful commentator, but hews too closely to free market orthodoxy for my taste. But his review of Maggie Mahar’s Money- Driven […]

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Summer Rerun: “Unwinding the Fraud for Bubbles”

This post first appeared on March 27, 2007 This is a great post by Tanta at Calculated Risk on the classic types of mortgage frauds and how they morphed into new forms due to a unique confluence of buyer naivete and broker/originator greed (oh, and sometimes buyer greed too). She clearly discusses recent versus traditional […]

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Summer Rerun: “Toothless Fed”

This post first appeared on March 26, 2007 The post below is from a reader, DS. He focuses on the fact that the Fed has basically admitted that its powers are limited due to the extent of financial activity that takes place outside its purview (the Fed supervises federally-chartered banks; securities firms, which are regulated […]

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Summer Rerun: The Tinkerbell Market

This post first appeared on March 14, 2007 One of today’s lessons is to have greater courage in my convictions. In a number of earlier posts (such as “The Rising Tide of Liquidity,” part 2 and part 3 of the same, “Where Has the (Perception of) Risk Gone“) I pointed to how toppy the markets […]

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Summer Rerun: It’s Official: “A Potential Credit Crunch”

This post first appeared on February 18, 2007 Mirable dictu, a Wall Street Journal editorial, “How Expansions Die,” that, for the most part, has a solid foundation in reality. Although the WSJ’s news pages have been reporting on the meltdown in the subprime mortgage market (admittedly somewhat less intently than the Financial Times), both the […]

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Summer Rerun: “Why America Will Need Some Elements of a Welfare State”

This post first appeared on February 14, 2007 An excellent column by Martin Wolf in the Financial Times, where he is the lead economics editor. Starting with principles put forward by Ben Bernanke in his recent speech on income inequality, Wolf concludes that America cannot do without some form of a welfare state, specifically improved […]

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Summer Rerun: The FT : “We Need a Clear and Predictable Price for Carbon”

This post first appeared on February 5, 2007 We have to admit to being a little slow on the uptake from time to time. We reported on the FT’s February 2 editorial, which commented on the publication of the first of four reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (Media watch item: still no […]

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Summer Rerun: The Rising Tide of Liquidity, Part 3

Tonight I am initiating summer reruns, a replay of posts I particularly liked from 2007, 2008, and early 2009 (the blog started in late December 2006). This selection represents roughly the top 1% of the pieces written then. I picked this window because it overlaps with the crisis (although the replays of posts from the […]

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