Author Archives: William Black

By William K. Black
June 27, 2017     Bloomington, MN

The president of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) launched a coordinated attack on “shorts” that mirrored his rival’s (Nasdaq) attack.  The NYSE assault, however, used bizarre rhetoric.

“It feels kind of icky and un-American, betting against a company,” NYSE Group President Tom Farley told lawmakers in Washington Tuesday.

The heads of the NYSE and Nasdaq have appropriated the word “transparency” to support the effort to reduce the shorts’ effectiveness.  When the NYSE purports to champion “transparency” – the key to reducing fraud by the CEOs of the companies whose stocks they exchange – it is time for investors to grab their wallets and hold them tight.  The stock exchanges are very far from being champions of transparency when the question is what the CEOs of the listing companies should be required to disclose.  Sure enough, it turns out that the stock exchanges’ proposed anti-short “reform” is actually a means to try to reduce the reliability of the public disclosures made by the CEOs of firms on those stock exchanges.  A sophisticated stock fraudster wants the public to believe the firm is “transparent” because of its disclosures, but it is those very disclosures (when false) that turn that ‘transparency’ into an illusion designed to deceive the investor.  When shorts improve the reliability of the disclosures that the CEOs of firms listed on the stock exchanges make, they protect investors from fraud.  That makes honest “shorts” highly “American.”

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By William K. Black
June 26, 2017     Bloomington, MN

There are many people culpable for the mass loss of life in the Grenfell fire in London.  At this time, we know enough about the fire and its causes to be able to discuss these matters with sufficient confidence to draw preliminary conclusions.  As always, we should also keep in mind that we do not have all the facts so some of our conclusions must be tentative.

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NEP’s Bill Black appears on The Real News Network and says don’t expect much – sadly, the British Serious ‘Farce’ Office that brought about the charges may not have the wits to carry out the prosecution. You can view with transcript here.

By William K. Black
June 6, 2017     Bloomington, MN

Rupert Murdoch controls the Wall Street Journal and Fox News.  Even before he acquired the WSJ its editorial board was known for its members’ ultra-right wing fervor.  The acquisition intensified that fervor.  The editorial board’s fervor has infected the WSJ’s news pages.  That is the context essential to understanding the significance of its June 6, 2017 editorial eviscerating President Donald Trump.  They entitled their editorial “The Buck Stops Everywhere Else.”  Here is the most damning paragraph.   .

If this pattern continues, Mr. Trump may find himself running an Administration with no one but his family and the Breitbart staff. People of talent and integrity won’t work for a boss who undermines them in public without thinking about the consequences. And whatever happened to the buck stops here?

In addition to the obvious slam, consider several aspects of the content, tone, and timing of the editorial.  They published it on the anniversary of D-Day, a day of courage and personal responsibility.  Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Allied commander of the invasion and future president of the United States, took a large gamble on the weather clearing enough to allow the invasion to occur.  The editorial, appropriately, given tight word count limits, did not explain what so many adult Americans recall – the last sentence of Eisenhower’s statement to the public in the event the invasion failed.  He personally drafted the statement.

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By William K. Black
April 17, 2017     Bloomington, MN

William Cohan’s April 14, 2017 column in the New York Times discusses Daniel Tarullo’s swan song talk on bank regulation.  Here are the key passages from that column for the first half of my discussion.

Much to the relief of Wall Street executives, who feared and hated him in equal measure, Daniel K. Tarullo left his powerful perch on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors last week, but not before delivering one last lecture on how big banks should be regulated in his absence.

His swan song was pretty surprising, all things considered. It also went largely unnoticed, much like Mr. Tarullo himself during his eight years at the Federal Reserve. Many people have never heard of him, even though his decisions affected their lives in ways big and small.

Once described as the “Wizard of Oz,” for the power he wielded behind the scenes, Mr. Tarullo was appointed to the Federal Reserve by President Barack Obama in January 2009. At the Fed, Mr. Tarullo took over the important responsibility of regulating the big Wall Street banks, a job that, understandably, had been the purview of the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The oversight moved to Washington from New York in the wake of the financial crisis.

“It was obvious that a lot in the U.S. regulatory system had not worked particularly well before the crisis,” Mr. Tarullo said in a 2015 interview with The Wall Street Journal.

Cohan was writing about a different subject, one I discuss briefly in the second half of this article, so he did not discuss the insanity described in these four paragraphs.  Here is the short version of that insanity.

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