Posts Tagged: bankers

Here is our response to Nicole Gelinas:    

A couple days ago we had a piece up on National Review Online.  Professor Arnold Kling and Nicole Gelinas  both comented on it.�
Mr. Kling was off to such a great start, and then without warning he’s just gone plain silly.
Some of his confusion is unsurprising. Everyone, but everyone who comments on the crisis seems to [...]

Your investment advisor likely puts together your portfolio in the same way the busted banks put together their own portfolios of mortgage-backed securities
In Part I we talked about the first big idea that your investment advisor probably shares with your banker, especially if your bank is one of the big important ones that almost blew [...]

This Sunday, New York Times Magazine is publishing a story titled: HEADING OFF THE NEXT FINANCIAL CRISIS (Hat tip Mike Allen at Politico). In the piece New York Times economics columnist David Leonhardt looks at the idea of preventing the next financial crisis, or at least making it less damaging. He includes a conversation he [...]

Health Care Bill Passes
Think “medical tourism”!

Samuelson rides his hobby horse but makes good points on Greenspan

Samuelson, like most guys with  big idea, wants to fit everything into it these days. But it is his defenses of Greenspan that are most interesting. We used to be always attacking the fellow back in his maestro days, but [...]

Ok, let’s take the Dodd bill point by point, using the summary written by Dodd’s own committee staff.�
1)Creates “a strong consumer protection watchdog” which though housed in the Fed will be able to “autonomously write rules for consumer protection.”�
Dodd’s justification: “The economic crisis was driven by an across-the-board failure to protect consumers”�
Our Take: Imprudent “pro-consumer” [...]

Forget how sleazy this is. How stupid is it than someone with this kind of access is BUYING AIG in January 2008. Just goes to show how hopeless any regulatory solution is. This woman, along with Dodd himself, has privileged access to the best information available to the government. She is chief counsel to the [...]

Sorkin has the politics of this exactly right

Arguing over the street address of the consumer financial protection  agency makes the GOP look dumb and on the take. (Sort of like real life.) There are really principled and therefor persuasive arguments against a consumer agency, like “consumer protection” in the form of forcing banks to make [...]

The whitewash of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has to be numbered among the most successful spin operations of our time. Within days of the market collapse in September ‘08, both Senator Dodd and Representative Frank were marching stooges up to Capitol Hill to testify that Fannie and Freddie—virtually run by the congressional committees chaired [...]

Commentary By Capitalism Betrayed’s Redleaf and Vigilante in MarketWatch today:
Forget regulation, just make the banks open their books.
By Andrew Redleaf and Richard Vigilante
MINNEAPOLIS, (MarketWatch) — Sen. Dodd’s new and not-very-improved financial reform bill, like the House bill passed last December, is driven by two of the most cherished popular myths of the financial crisis. [...]