Category Archives: William K. Black

Hensarling: Regulations (and Condoms) Don’t Work if You Don’t Use Them

Posted on February 10, 2015 by William Black | Comments Off

By William K. Black
Bloomington, MN: February 8, 2015

I am writing a series of columns about the Republican fantasy team of apologists for the elite banksters. Jeb Hensarling (R, TX), chair of the House banking committee that is taking the lead in trying to further deregulate banking and Peter Wallison, one of the chief architects of the most recent banking crisis, are teaming up to flog Wallison’s book. The book attempts to convince its readers that Wallison’s leadership of the effort to push the three “de’s” – deregulation, desupervision, and de facto decriminalization – played no role in creating the criminogenic environment that produced the three most destructive epidemics of financial fraud in history. Hensarling is hosting Wallison’s book unveiling.

They are the perfect fantasy team because they inhabit a fantasy world of their own construction that rests on a foundation of non-facts with appalling logical leaps. This first column begins with a brief introduction to how crazy Hensarling is – and recall that he is the Republican Party’s leader on financial issues. George Akerlof and Paul Romer, in their classic 1993 article “Looting: The Economic Underworld of Bankruptcy for Profit,” explained that the 1982 federal deregulation law was “bound to produce looting.”

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Tagged accounting control fraud, banksters, criminogenic environment

Oral Testimony of William K. Black

Posted on February 8, 2015 by William Black | 7 comments

Note: This oral testimony was delivered on February 5, 2015 in Dublin, Ireland before the Oireachtas’ Joint Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis. These are my prepared remarks. My actual oral testimony differed considerably. A transcript is available from the Inquiry, as is complete video.

To:       Joint Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis
From:   William K. Black
Date:     February 3, 2015

Oral Testimony of William K. Black

Introduction

Thank you for the invitation to assist Ireland as you face among the most important questions Ireland and many other nations must answer correctly if we are to put a stop to our recurrent, intensifying financial crises. I am William K. Black and I come to you wearing four disciplinary and three institutional “hats.” My primary appointment is in economics with a joint appointment in law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. I am a white-collar criminologist and a former senior financial regulator. My research specialties include elite white-collar crime and corruption, regulation, and financial crises. I am the Distinguished Scholar in Residence for Financial Regulation at the University of Minnesota’s Law School. I am a professor at the Instituto de Altos Estudios Nacionales es la Universidad de Posgrado del Estado in Quito, Ecuador. My testimony, of course, is solely my personal views rather than the official position of any of these universities.

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Posted in William K. Black

Tagged bank fraud, banksters, Financial crisis, gresham's dynamic

Bill Black appears on The Real News Network discussing Greece

Posted on January 30, 2015 by Devin Smith | 1 comment

NEP’s Bill Black appeared on The Real News Network (TRNN) discussing the Syriza victory in Greece despite what WSJ and NYT would like us to think. The video is below. I you would like to see the video and transcript, it is here.

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Tagged nyt, Syriza, WSJ

Business Game Changers

Posted on January 26, 2015 by Devin Smith | Comments Off

NEP’s Bill Black appears on Business Game Changes with Sarah Westall at WebTalkRadio.net. You can listen to the episode here. This topic is “Wall Street Corruption is Worse Than You Know. Mainstreet Needs to get Educated to Reclaim our Country!”

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Syriza Wins in Greece: NYT and WSJ Still Get Their Re-Writes Wrong

Posted on January 26, 2015 by William Black | 2 comments

By William K. Black
Bloomington, MN: January 26, 2015

I wrote a column Sunday, January 25, 2015 as the Greek election results became sufficiently clear to know that Syriza was receiving a strong plurality from the voters and as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal posted on their websites the first reaction news columns. I criticized the dishonest nature of both paper’s coverage (actually non-coverage) of what austerity inflicted on the Greek people. Both of those initial columns have now been modified, so I have looked to see whether they improved their candor in their re-writes. The updated NYT column still contains this clunker.

“Syriza’s victory is a milestone for Europe. Continuing economic weakness has stirred a populist backlash from France to Spain to Italy, with more voters growing fed up with policies that require sacrifice to meet the demands of creditors but that have not delivered more jobs and prosperity.”

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Tagged ECB, eu, greece, nyt, Syriza, troika, WSJ

Syriza Wins and the NYT and WSJ Coverage Competes for Mendacity

Posted on January 25, 2015 by William Black | 7 comments

By William K. Black
Bloomington, MN: January 25, 2015

The Wall Street Journal and the New York Time’s eurozone reporters, who share the same unshakable devotion to TINA and austerity as the Murdochized WSJ news staff have been thrown into a panic by Syriza’s electoral successes in Greece.

Both papers are freaked out, as are the Germans, about the potential for Greece to spark a wave of rejections of the troika’s infliction of austerity in a manner similar to how the infliction of self-destructive austerity programs pursuant to the Washington Consensus’ demands led to the “lost decade” and the democratic election of what is now over a dozen Latin American candidates running on anti-austerity platforms. The Washington Consensus was drafted and named by an economist at Pete Peterson’s International Institute. Peterson is a Wall Street billionaire whose mission is causing debt and deficit hysteria and plugging the joys of austerity and unraveling the safety nets. His greatest goal is privatizing Social Security – producing hundreds of billions in additional fees for Wall Street.

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Tagged Austerians, austerity, ECB, greece, merkel, nyt, Syriza, Trokia, WSJ

The NYT Gives S&M Advice to the Greeks: Stand by Your Sadist

Posted on January 24, 2015 by William Black | 8 comments

By William K. Black
Bloomington, MN: January 24, 2015

The New York Times’ coverage of the eurozone crisis remains execrable. Sometimes, however, it is so bad that it achieves brilliant, albeit unintentional self-parody.” The latest example is a column that, for the NYT, is in the top 5% of its efforts on Europe. Even at its best (least worst) the paper cannot help itself.

The January 23, 2015 column is entitled “After an Anxiety-Filled Campaign, Greek Voters Consider a Turn to the Left.” It does admit that Greece’s economic condition is horrific.

“After five years in which the country’s economy has shrunk by 25 percent and the number of jobless has risen far beyond what its creditors ever predicted….”

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Tagged Eurozone, greece, nyt, Syriza

QE is Europe’s “Last Best Hope,” – If One Ignores the First, Best Hope

Posted on January 23, 2015 by William Black | 8 comments

By William K. Black
Bloomington, MN: January 23, 2015

It’s the curse of the commentator on commentators. I recently wrote nice things about Neil Irwin’s New York Times column about the Eurozone. On January 22, 2015, he wrote a column about the ECB’s adoption of quantitative easing (QE), that claimed it was “last, best hope” for the Eurozone. In fairness to Irwin, his column contains plenty of skepticism as to whether QE is even a poor “hope” for the Eurozone. Irwin also has the right quotation from Mario Draghi, the head of the ECB.

“Mr. Draghi acknowledged that it would take more than an open spigot of money from the central bank to get Europe’s economy on track, and that political authorities across Europe must act as well. ‘What monetary policy can do is to create the basis for growth,’ he said at a news conference in Frankfurt. ‘But for growth to pick up, you need investment. For investment, you need confidence. And for confidence, you need structural reforms.’”

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Tagged eu, Euorzone, Europe, troika

Bill Black appearing on The Real News Network

Posted on January 20, 2015 by admin | Comments Off

NEP’s Bill Black appeared on The Real News Network (TRNN) discussing the bill that the House of Representatives passed that further weakens financial regulation. The video is below. If you wish to view the transcript at TRNN, click here.

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The BBC and the Economist Combine to Try to Defeat Syriza

Posted on January 20, 2015 by William Black | Comments Off

By William K. Black
Bloomington, MN: January 20, 2015

As the Greek election nears, the mainstream media is ramping up its efforts to attack Syriza. As I have often explained, the trauma caused by the Washington Consensus’ economic malpractice in inflicting austerity on Latin America led to the election of a substantial number of leaders opposed to austerity and the troika’s infliction of austerity may lead to a similar dynamic in the EU. The BBC and The Economist agree that this could occur – and it terrifies them. A January 19, 2015 BBC article, presented as news rather than opinion, is entitled “BBC Democracy Day: Europe ‘faces political earthquakes.”

The article abounds in unintentional self-parody. First, the article admits austerity is a major driver of the “political earthquakes.” For reasons that pass all understanding the BBC hired the Economist’s “Intelligence Unit” to write what any right-wing BBC columnist would have written for no additional fee. Given that the Economist is one of the entities most culpable for the economic malpractice of inflicting austerity on the eurozone the idea that it is good journalism for them to opine about their opponents is sad or laughable depending on how one responds to absurdity.

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