mostly I'm just closing tabs
Nov. 25th, 2011 08:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
solarbirdNot a real economics post, but several notes of relevance:
It's important to remember the actual cause of the 2008 financial crisis. The financial industry is floating a Big Lie - that it was all Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and the US Federal Government's fault - and has the GOP picking it up and propagating the meme. As most people reading me know, this is bullshit. Forbes (linked above, and here) outlines it decently enough, other than its mis-emphasis on cognitive dissonance and lack of needed emphasis on knowing fraud. I'll accept there was some of both, but the latter was rampant.
The article notes that this sets up a repeat of the same. This is true. And Forbes is not the only one to notice.
Greece's 'technocrats' are actually fascists. I don't mean all of them but I also don't mean metaphorically. I mean, fascist party leaders. They have photos of the new Greek Minister of Infrastructure, Transport and Networks carrying an axe around on campus looking for left-leaning students to attack.
Reports on the nature of the new debt talks are all over the place. We have reports of a hard, hard bargain, but we also have wprivate bond investors being bailed out, on taxpayer backs, at full value. I suppose we'll just have to see what we see.
This article on MF Global is worth a read. MF Global is a bit of an AIG, redux, with the same kind of lies about capitalisation and post-collapse misappropriation off funds to pay off connected debtors out of order.
The credit markets are pretty convinced this is all going to explode. Wednesday was an example of that breaking through to equities trading.
The Fed threw US$88B in "other" funding at the banks last week. Read the link to see why that's curious, because it is.
It's important to remember the actual cause of the 2008 financial crisis. The financial industry is floating a Big Lie - that it was all Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and the US Federal Government's fault - and has the GOP picking it up and propagating the meme. As most people reading me know, this is bullshit. Forbes (linked above, and here) outlines it decently enough, other than its mis-emphasis on cognitive dissonance and lack of needed emphasis on knowing fraud. I'll accept there was some of both, but the latter was rampant.
The article notes that this sets up a repeat of the same. This is true. And Forbes is not the only one to notice.
Greece's 'technocrats' are actually fascists. I don't mean all of them but I also don't mean metaphorically. I mean, fascist party leaders. They have photos of the new Greek Minister of Infrastructure, Transport and Networks carrying an axe around on campus looking for left-leaning students to attack.
Reports on the nature of the new debt talks are all over the place. We have reports of a hard, hard bargain, but we also have wprivate bond investors being bailed out, on taxpayer backs, at full value. I suppose we'll just have to see what we see.
This article on MF Global is worth a read. MF Global is a bit of an AIG, redux, with the same kind of lies about capitalisation and post-collapse misappropriation off funds to pay off connected debtors out of order.
The credit markets are pretty convinced this is all going to explode. Wednesday was an example of that breaking through to equities trading.
The Fed threw US$88B in "other" funding at the banks last week. Read the link to see why that's curious, because it is.
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no subject
Date: 2011-11-26 06:52 am (UTC)Er, well, yes, in the same sense that gravity was behind the crash of Flight 143. It's true but bears no explanatory value, unless people are somehow differently greedy in this century than they were in previous ones*.
The rest of the article is better. Could have used more discussion of the systematic misuse of the gaussian copula function.
*: I think there is a case to be made that, in functional terms, the major players actually are "differently greedy", in that the reward structure for executives and financial managers is massively distorted, but it's technical and something I'm still mulling over.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-26 06:55 am (UTC)...yes. At least, that passes the sniff test. Something to think about more. (Personally, I see that part as more like boilerplate.)
I also go on about this a lot, but I think the overemphasis on opportunity loss (starting in the late 1970s) in business classes and economic theory also makes current major players "differently greedy" from a functional standpoint.