By William Cohan From the Financial Times, April 22 2009. So, what do all the $12.7bn (€9.8bn, £8.7bn), and counting, in first-quarter profits from what used to be known as Wall Street add up to? Have the past two years been one giant head fake, despite what we have been led to believe? Is […]
. . . and resorting to ‘accounting tricks‘ to solve the problem of systemic risk and the failures of the financial crisis is not the answer. Why..?? I read about an interesting anecdote at a House Financial Services Committee hearing last month, so I looked it up (see the video below). Robert Herz of the Financial […]
JPMorgan Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon, in a 1Q Report letter to shareholders, blamed the economic crisis on the Iraq war and investor freed. Interestingly, culpability by Wall Street risk-taking, accounting tricks, insolvent balance sheets, deregulation, toxic assets, short-selling, corporate welfare, ‘self-regulatory’ schemes and other financial industry misdeed was conspicuously missing from Mr. Dimon’s analysis.
Joeseph Stiglitz, a highly regarded former chief economist of the World Bank and Nobel laureate in global economics, says the Obama administration’s plan to fix the U.S. banking crisis is destined to fail because the programs have been designed to coddle Wall Street rather than creating a viable 21st century financial system.
“All the ingredients they have so far are weak, and there are several missing ingredients,” Stiglitz said in an interview. The people who designed the plans are “either in the pocket of the banks or they’re incompetent.”
Paul Krugman, Princeton professor and New York Times Op-Ed columnist, won the 2008 Nobel Prize in Economics for his analysis of trade patterns and location of economic activity. I started paying attention to Prof. Krugman’s work after his Nobel prize, including his recent book “Conscience of a Liberal”. But more accessible than his […]
Remember just a few weeks ago when all the critics and mainstream media bloviators, sometimes even before he took office, were decrying the declining stock market performance as the “Obama recession”..?? And recall in their cynical effort to “link” President Obama to stock market performance, whenever he spoke publicly media outlets would place a live stream […]
The Fed is already printing trillions of U.S. dollars, now plans to start injecting foreign currency swaps into the equation, too, according to minutes recently released from its March meeting.
I don’t care what anyone says about them. Purely from the perspective of a Market participant, these guys are thinking with their helicopter-caps on, and fully engaged. What do I mean..?? Simply this: President Obama and the ‘brain trust’ in his cabinet have outlined plans for what I believe to be a simply […]
Here’s an odd, but interesting piece from HuffPo: ‘As chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan was known for using quirky, proletariat metrics to judge the temperature of the economy. The most famous of these, as recounted by NPR’s Robert Krulwich in January 2008, were the sales […]
21st Century Capitalism By Robert L. Heilbroner (W.W. Norton & Co., 1994) “It is my hope that some grasp of what the twenty-first century holds in store for capitalism may enable us to avoid at least some of the pain we might otherwise have to endure,” writes the eminent […]
Capitalism vs. Capitalism By MICHEL ALBERT (4Walls 8Windows, 1993) Very relevant to restructuring of the Global financial architecture and regulatory framework debate that will be driving the discussions at the upcoming G-20 Summit. I first read this back in the early 90’s but it has seen a revival in the context of current global economic crisis. It examines the two prevailing […]
The 2009 G-20 summit is in full swing in London and, by all appearances, it seems to be producing a number of interesting results to confront the Global financial crisis. For instance, British PM Gordon Brown announced that world leaders attending the summit in London Thursday laid out a raft of measures in a G-20 communique […]
The 2009 G-20 summit, began today in London, running through Friday, April 3d. The overall objective will seek to reach consensus among Leaders of member nations on how to confront the Global economic crisis. The agenda, to say the least, is full. However, there are divergent proposals and solutions, and still many challenges that must first be confronted. This […]
In the spirit of April Fools Day, a prescient George Carlin spoof of who really controls things in America. His insight is eerily relevant to the Wingnuttery of today’s debate about the fundamental character of our nation.
As G-20 Summit nears in London next week, anger and resentment aimed at Western, or ‘Laisse-Faire’ capitalism, rises among public in member nations.