Daily Archives: April 2, 2014

Ten Lessons We Must Learn from Charles Keating

By William K. Black

I knew Charles Keating, the head of Lincoln Savings, in my capacity as a financial regulator and as the subject of his wrath.  His fraud schemes and the manner in which they targeted our system’s vulnerabilities in an era before Citizens United made the corruption of politicians by fraudulent CEOs child’s play remain the play book for the world’s most destructive financial frauds.  Our failure to learn the ten lessons has caused immense suffering.  Keating’s life, and the great harm he caused, will not have been in vain if we step back and use the occasion of his death to reflect on the changes we need to make.

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The New York Time’s Disgraceful Reporting about Deflation

By William K. Black

This is the third and final installment of a series of columns discussing the latest harmful policies and articles about eurozone deflation.  This column discusses the March 31, 2014 article in the New York Times entitled “Another Worrisome Drop in Euro Zone Inflation.”  I have already discussed the extraordinary sentence in the article in which the head of the European Central Bank (ECB), Mario Draghi, is cited as claiming that deflation is desirable for eurozone nations suffering Great Depression levels of unemployment.  Draghi claims that deflation will cause reductions in working class wages and prices that will lead to increased exports and economic recoveries.  I explained in prior columns that this is contrary to the ECB’s written policies and economic theories and the views of virtually all economists.  The NYT article does not report these facts.

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