Category Archives: William K. Black

Roger Myerson Updated Paean to Plutocrats as Capitalism’s Greatest Treasure

By William K. Black
(Cross posted at Benzinga.com)

In my first article on the Nobel Laureate Roger Myerson’s failed policies that helped make finance so criminogenic that it drove the ongoing financial crisis I began the exploration of Myerson’s claim that plutocrats constituted the unique advantage of capitalism over a system that forbade privately-owned firms.  Myerson calls a system that forbids privately-owned firms “socialism.”  He asserts that plutocrats demonstrate the accuracy of Friedrich von Hayek’s assertion of the inherent advantage of “capitalism.”  My first article used Myerson’s Prize lecture to explore why his methodology, theories, and recommended policies failed so spectacularly.  This article expands on that theme by citing other work by Myerson.

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Roger Myerson’s Paean to Plutocracy

By William K. Black
(Cross posted at Benzinga.com)

Introduction

This article begins a project to critique the work by economists concerning regulation that has led to the award of Nobel prizes.  The prize in economics in honor of Alfred Nobel is unique.  It is not part of the formal Nobel Prize system.  It was created by a large Swedish bank and it is the only “science” prize frequently given to those who proved incorrect.  The theme of my series is how poorly the work has stood the test of predictive accuracy.  Worse, it has led to policies in the private and public sector that are criminogenic and explain our recurrent, intensifying financial crises.

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The New York Times Butchers the Story of How Treasury Got NPR to Censor My Criticism of It

By William K. Black

We have further proof about how thin-skinned Treasury Secretary Geithner was, but we have it in the form of a weird May 29, 2013 story by Ben Protess in the New York Times.  The story is in part about me, though it doesn’t mention me, because it is a story that notes that Treasury was able to convince NPR to remove from its December 13, 2013 broadcast a statement I made criticizing Geithner – an action that NPR took and noted, but without naming me as the source of the criticism.  The weird part of the NYT story is that while it confirms the accuracy of the statement I made about Geithner it asserts that the statement by the unidentified “academic” criticizing Geithner was false.  Continue reading

How Dare DOJ Insult HSBC’s Crooks as Less “Professional” than Liberty Reserve’s Crooks?

By William K. Black

Standard Chartered and HSBC’s leaders must be doubly humiliated by the description by Mythili Raman, the acting head of the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Criminal Division, of Liberty Reserve’s money laundering operation.  UK laws are, of course, very congenial to those suing for libel and I am sure that these banking titans are meeting with their solicitors to demand a retraction and apology from Raman.  In the very first clause of her May 28, 2013 statement to the media on the actions against Liberty Reserve’s controlling officers, Raman emphasized how “professional” they were as money launderers:  “Today, we strike a severe blow against a professional money laundering enterprise charged with laundering over $6 billion in criminal proceeds.”   In four paragraphs, she used the word “professional” three times and “sophisticated” once to describe Liberty Reserve’s money laundering.  Continue reading

If you want to Revel in Blind Hypocrisy Read the Comments to an Attack on the Left

By William K. Black

We all know that the folks who comment on web sites are not a random selection of humanity.  They tend to have stronger views than the general public and on sites that have intense political views they are commonly nasty towards their political opponents.  An anonymous conservative author who writes under the pseudonym Leften Wright about being oppressed by liberals has just authored an article pitching his book.  The article claims that liberals are (uniquely) rude to conservatives.  Conservatives and liberals periodically write this article demonizing their opponents for the alleged crime of demonizing their opponents.  As befits the genre, the anonymous author relies on innuendo and ad hominem attacks that generalize to his/her political opponents based on slights to the author.  None of these personal slights can be tested given the author’s anonymity.

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Why Do the Folks Who Make Booze Care More about their Reputations than the Bankers?

By William K. Black
(Cross posted at Benzinga.com)

There are many forms of control fraud.  I have written primarily about accounting control frauds because they drive our recurrent, intensifying financial crises and we are in the midst of the worst such crisis in modern history.  I wrote recently about the intersection of anti-purchaser and anti-employee control fraud in Bangladesh that killed 1,127 employees (and injured roughly twice that number) and made the point that control frauds kill and maim more people than traditional blue collar crimes and cause greater financial losses than all other forms of property crime combined.  Control frauds also cause a greater number of crimes than do traditional blue collar crimes.  Think for example of the number of victims of the Libor scams, measuring in the hundreds of thousands and the foreclosure frauds.

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NEP’S Bill Black on RT’s The Truthseeker – Washington Consensus

Bill Black appears on the latest episode of RT’s Truthseeker. This episode’s topic is exposing the truth behind the “Washington Consensus”

Brown-Vitter Will Not and Cannot Work but it is Criminogenic

By William K. Black

Introduction

Senators Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and David Vitter (R-LA) have introduced a bill entitled “Terminating Bailouts for Taxpayer Fairness Act of 2013.”  It is a miracle of modern staffing that Vitter, who loves polluters as much as his prostitutes, was able to pull himself away from demanding that President Obama’s nominee to run the EPA answer over 600 questions and join Brown in proposing the bill.  Under Obama, bipartisan bills have a dismal fate because the Democrats negotiate away key elements necessary to create a good bill and add provisions that make parts of the bill harmful – just to pick up a few token co-sponsors – and then the Republicans kill good parts of the bill anyway and try to enact the bad parts. Continue reading

William Black at CFIA Conference

South-South News interviews NEP’s William Black at CFIA Conference. He provides his extended dispair with Eurozone policies.

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Niall Ferguson’s Latest Gay Bashing is the Least of His Problems

By William K. Black
(Cross posted at Benzina.com)

It is always a disaster when devotees of theoclassical economists speak their minds in front of what they think are friendly audiences.  Mitt Romney’s attack on 47% of Americans as leeches that it was his job not to represent were he elected President was the final nail in his self-constructed electoral coffin.  We now have Niall Ferguson, a history professor at Harvard and Hoover fellow whose theoclassical views have proven so influential with Prime Minister Cameron’s government’s adoption of austerity policies that have killed the UK recovery. Continue reading