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” [...]
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. [...]
The good side of Soros—and CDS
He’s obnoxious politically but you have to love a guy who has done so much over the years to expose sovereign financial finagling and make money doing it.
Predictably the governments of the world are taking seriously the idea of regulating CDS, now that these lie-detectors of the financial world are [...]
Dumb squared
First he implies that traders caused the crisis, when the reverse is closer to the truth (the shorts were the only voice of sanity through the whole farce) then he says the tax would raise tons of money, which could be true only if it does not work, i.e., doesn’t discourage trading.
We think taxing [...]
Amity Shlaes offers more than rhetoric on the government spending crowding out private employment.
Is it still predatory lending if the borrower has, you know, an army? Michael Hirsh says Goldman is the meanie and that poor little innocent Greek government got suckered. This is a real test of whether liberals will ever hold government responsible [...]
Federal Home Loan Bank sues Wall Street claiming Goldman, others failed to disclose liars’ loans mainly used by liars. Sure, liars’ loans were bank fraud and everybody involved should go to jail.
But the way the securitization process worked, it was the folks at the top of the food chain, in this case the Federal Home [...]
Is an AAA rating good for America? David Reilly at Bloomberg argues that a ratings downgrade is the only way to get Congress’s attention and stop the spending.
Another example of why Brian Wesbury is our favorite economist: Brian gets that–as Andy wrote in a recent client letter– the Fed never pulls back the money until [...]
