By William K. Black
(Cross posted at Benzinga.com)
Mark J. Perry and Robert Dell’s February 24, 2011 article (“More Equity, Less Government: Rethinking Bank Regulation”) claims that the government caused the crisis and that the solution is to increase capital requirements and reduce government regulation. The authors are at an ultra-conservative “think” tank (AEI) dedicated to protecting elite CEOs from the “regulatory cops on the beat.”
Posted in William K. Black
Tagged AEI, Alan Greenspan, Great Financial Crisis, Regulatory advice
By June Carbone
The debate over inequality has shifted. It is no longer whether greater inequality exists (it indisputably does) or whether it is a good thing (even David Brooks and Marco Rubio concede that it is not). Instead, the big issue is whether the rise of the top one tenth of one percent with their extraordinary concentration of wealth has anything to do with the rise of inequality between the middle and the bottom. The answer is, of course it does, in ways that are both simple and complex. Let us begin to count the ways . . . .
By Alexandria J E Angus
Warren Mosler gave this talk in Chianciano, Italy, on January 11, 2014 at the Chianciano Conference entitled Oltre L’Euro: La Sinistra. La Crisi. L’Alternativa. In English: Beyond The Euro: The Left. The Crisis. The Alternative [Google translation]. The video is embedded below, but you have to listen to a realtime translation in Italian, which doubles the listening time. I thought this talk important enough to transcribe, if not deliciously subversive on the part of Warren Mosler who offers Italians a way to save their economy. The transcription follows below the video.
Mosler describes how Italy (or any of the 17 EU countries that use the Euro) can leave the European Union safely if the EU persists, as it insists on doing, in impoverishing their country and citizens.
The subheads in blue are mine, not Mosler’s, and are designed to assist reading. Some terms Mosler refers to in the body text relate specifically to the Italian economy, and I can’t identify them because I don’t know their Italian names.
Enjoy.
NEP’s William Black provides his view on this topic in the New York Time’s Room For Debate section. You can view his post here.
Two articles that should be read by anyone interested in the global financial crisis have just been published. They address Spain. Spain tends to get far less coverage in the U.S. than Ireland and Greece, but it is a far larger country and economy. Its real estate bubble, relative to GDP, was the second worst among economically developed nations. Spain is so large and its unemployment is so severe that “Almost a quarter of all the unemployed in the 28-country European Union live in Spain….” Spain’s housing bubble was funded by an out of control banking sector and the bad loans are causing increasing damage to the banks. “[B]anks’ assets continue to deteriorate with an increase in the number of loans not being paid back.”
If, as an effort at satire, I had written the story that the New York Times’ “Deal Book” has just written about what JPMorgan’s board of directors has just actually done, people would have dismissed my piece as absurdly over the top. The board has decided to increase Jamie Dimon’s compensation substantially. The reason the board gives (in leaks to Deal Book) must have resonated with Deal Book because it is the theme song that Deal Book has been singing for months, another “‘somebody done Dimon wrong’ song.”
Recall that the title of Andrew Ross Sorkin’s country-western lament was that Dimon was the victim of “bloodlust” because Dennis Kelleher, the head of the NGO “Better Markets,” believed that Dimon should be fired for poor performance.
A big MMT thanks to Donna D’Souza aka Trixie aka @HaikuCharlatan. She has done an awesome job of animating J.D. Alt’s wonderful new ebook Diagrams & Dollars: Modern Money Illustrated. For your viewing enjoyment, Donna’s video is below.
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Donna D'Souza, HaikuCharlatan, j.d. alt, MMT, modern money theory, Trixie, video
Politico has joined Deal Book in a “competition in sycophancy.” The contestants are competing to see which can author the most extreme version of a fantasy meme in which heroic Wall Street “banks” are oppressed by “Washington.” I had not believed that any “serious” journalist could compete with Andrew Ross Sorkin’s Deal Book in pounding this meme. Ben White, Politico’s economics reporter, has become my dark horse favorite in the race to the bottom of the “serious” business press with his whitewash entitled “How Washington beat Wall Street.”
In my recent column I tried to convey a bit of courage, competence, and craziness that Jim Cirona displayed and had to deal with as a top regional regulator during the savings and loan crisis.
I failed, however, to discuss an episode that epitomizes all these elements. The incident also eventually led to Cirona hiring me as the SVP and General Counsel of the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco (FHLBSF). I will draw heavily on Bartlett Naylor’s “The Legend of Wild Bill and Black Bart” in recalling the tale.
“It was obdurate government callousness to misery that first stoked the flames of rage and frustration. With unemployment a scourge in Negro ghettoes, the government still tinkers with half-hearted measures, refuses still to become an employer of last resort. It asks the business community to solve the problems as though its past failures qualified it for success.” –Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in his last letter requesting support for the “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom”
In recent days, the Job Guarantee has been thrust into public discussion, thanks in large part to Jesse Myerson’s Rolling Stone article—see here.
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