Well, I Got This One Right at Least
Every so often, as a blogger, you look back on previous posts to answer the question, "Was I just being shrill and pessimistic or was I onto something?"A year ago, I wrote "The Foreclosure Mess: 7...
View ArticleSaturday Morning Housecleaning
I went back and cleaned up a bunch of comment spam. Comment spam, I'm finding out, grows geometrically once it takes root. For instance, my most-popular post ever:Debunking Gary Gorton's Fire Sale...
View ArticleWorking on Wall Street Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry
Felix Salmon waxed indignant about Jon Corzine's peculiar resignation statement, and laugh-out-loud lines such as, "This was a difficult decision, but one that I believe is best for the firm and its...
View ArticleIn Case Anyone Forgets Why "Occupy Wall Street" Exists
1. Our Congress -- ahem, the best Congress money can buy -- decided that pizza is a vegetable. This decision makes absolutely zero sense from a health and nutritional standpoint (I love pizza -- I had...
View ArticleNew Song Charting on YouTube: "Eat a Banker"
I found this song on YouTube with its timely message for the 99%:"Eat a Banker"It has a rather mellow, swaying beat -- not a violent-sounding song at all. I can even imagine it playing softly in the...
View ArticleFed Funnels Money to Banks on the Sly
Excellent Bloomberg story showing what was largely an open secret (even if the details weren't known), well before the Fed was forced to cough up the paperwork on its bailout of the U.S. financial...
View ArticleEurope's Bailout Fund -- Seriously, WTF Is This Thing?
I tried to figure out the EFSF again (the European Financial Stability Facility) and, once again, my brain exploded.I can't figure out if this Rube Goldbergian mother of all securitization schemes...
View ArticleKeep an Eye on That Shadow Banking, Folks
Because it's starting to rear its ugly head again.Turns out that what may be at the heart of MF Global's gaping hole on its (off) balance sheet: collateral that may have been shifted over to its U.K....
View ArticleJoe Nocera Takes on the Big Lie
I've often thought you could make a case for Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's culpability in the financial crisis: a very, very small case.So, if you started listing reasons for the crisis, they might...
View ArticleBill Black Takes on the "Fannie and Freddie Did It" Meme
I really enjoyed this piece for its knowledgeable, historical analysis. Black doesn't exactly side with the "It Wasn't Fannie and Freddie" crowd, but he's more unsparing in his criticism of ideologue...
View ArticleIs Being an Ideologue a Contributor to Stupidity?
A gratuitously provocative question?Maybe not.Consider the following equation:TA * TR = TB.Let's say TB represents some "financial obligation" among a group of people. Further, let's say that at some...
View ArticleNYT's DealBook Gets It All Wrong on CLOs
This was a painful piece to read at the New York Times DealBook: "A Debt Market's Slow Recovery Is Burdened by New Regulation."Steven Davidoff whips out his violin, tucks it under his chin, and plays a...
View ArticleOne Prediction, and One Quiet Cheer
First, the quiet cheer: regulators seem to be moving on shadow banking. For one, the SEC is talking about a floating net asset value for mutual funds and thicker capital buffers, which has predictably...
View ArticleIs Australia About to Slay the Ratings Monster?
Uh oh. Looks like Standard & Poor's may be on the verge of getting its comeuppance for all those hallucinatory, fee-inspired AAA ratings, in of all places, Australia. A 10-week court case has just...
View ArticleMust Read: A Smart Takedown of Economist's Cheerleading on Financial Innovation
Recently the Economist had a terrible report on the benefits of financial innovation. I read only part of it, but the jejune, spirited prose suggested an earnest college student who has discovered all...
View ArticleWhy You Should Be Very Depressed About Climate Change
This is a bit off topic, but for years I've been following the climate change debate. Today I came across this terrific list of "myths vs. what the science says". There are 173, total.So that's 173...
View ArticleAre We Finally Ready to Do Something Meaningful About Shadow Banking?
I've been heartened by a growing number of news stories that pose the question: "What to do about shadow banking?". Here's the latest, from the New York Times, to pop up on my screen (though this piece...
View ArticleMore Games Played by Ratings Agencies With Securitizations
I found this paper this morning: "Ratings, Mortgage Securitizations and the Apparent Creation of Value."Some excerpts below (my bold):Structured products are designed to produce desired ratings. The...
View ArticleBen Bernanke's Great Delusion?
Ben Bernanke made a speech Friday in which he made a couple of curious comments about the financial crisis.First (my bold):The multiple instances of run-like behavior during the crisis, together with...
View ArticleMust Read of the Week
Great lineup of papers from the Russell Sage Foundation and Century Foundation conference on the financial crisis on Friday.Behavioral finance, efficient market theory revisited ... your inner finance...
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