The Japanese Lesson
POPULAR ECONOMICS WEEKLY--THE JAPANESE LESSON I hope my latest Popular Economics column helps to explain the reasons for the $700 billion bailout. There is plenty of blame to go around: repeal of...
View ArticleA quadrillion here, a quadrillion there...
A certain figure has begun to circulate, an unbelievable number, namely a total of $531 trillion dollars in derivatives. This morning, however, my eyes widened to see the figure used by Peter S....
View ArticleGreenspan's Folly!!!
Forgive me, this is going to ramble, but mostly because I am really, really upset by what I am hearing in the Committee on Oversight right now. Alan Greenspan was "shocked, shocked I tell you!" that...
View ArticleGreenspan SHOCKED that banks couldn't police each other...
to which I say WTF?! http://www.marketwatch.com/... I came across this little gem while on marketwatch.com today and I just had to laugh at the irony...
View ArticleThe fall of the free market fundamentalists
Alan Greenspan said that he had found "a flaw in the model that I perceived is the critical functioning structure that defines how the world works." and that he had made a "mistake" in believing that...
View ArticleWaxman hearing = Bush 9/11 excuse
In the Waxman hearing on the finance debacle this morning, all three witnesses (Alan Greenspan, Christopher Cox and John Snow) essentially claim as their defense that, in spite of having the...
View Article"I made a mistake" Alan Greenspan
For all those folks who have been telling us that markets could be trusted and that all we had to do was hand our wallets and stock portfolios over to the conservatives and everyone would be...
View ArticleGreenspan's Reputation: Bubble Bursts
How the mighty have fallen! Former Fed chairman, Alan Greenspan, says that he didn't anticipate all the "wanton lending" that resulted when regulatory agencies let the magic hand of the marketplace run...
View ArticleGreenspan, bubbles, and responsibility
Cross-posted at River Twice Research. We are now in the season of scapegoats. The brays for justice and villains grow daily, and this week has seen a walk of shame as various participants in the credit...
View ArticleHalloween Bailout Song To the Tune of Monster Mash
On the next page you’ll find my version of Bobby "Boris" Pickett Monster Mash. The Monster Crash. Halloween is only a few days away. It’s really a socialist event where the candy is spread around....
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WebComic: Alan Greenspan Standup Comedian
In his recent testimony before congress, Mr. Greenspan came clean: "I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interest of organizations, specifically banks and others, was such as they were best...
View ArticlePerverse Incentives
This is both an explanation of, and a condemnation of, Alan Greenspan's failed "worldview". I think it will be instructive to assess exactly how he was wrong, and how he got to be more and more wrong...
View ArticleThe Blame Game: Volcker, Greenspan, Laffer and Reagan
If I hear one more mention of how the economic policies of the past eight years have brought us to our current crisis (it's been said in many places, including in this otherwise-excellent article by...
View ArticleNo Summers - No More Wall Streeters Running Treasury
The Treasury, as the rest of the federal government, must be part of rebuilding the real economy, not protecting those who have led and benefited from the financial gamesmanship built on the...
View ArticleWhat would republicans (Bush) have to do to gain your respect?
You've got to be as pissed off at the republicans as I am, particularly at the Bush variety. But, it's not just him. They're almost all so horrible. I just saw some video from today of Bush on the...
View ArticleObama vs Democrats : Pragmatism vs. Idealism - The War Within
So far Obama's cabinet selection is driven primarily by intelligence and pragmatism! Given the dire economic situation one may argue in favor of selecting people with pragmatism, experience,...
View ArticleBeyong The Age Of usury
It is generally agreed that casinos should, in the public interest, be inaccessible and expensive. And perhaps the same is true of Stock Exchanges." — John Maynard Keynes
View ArticleAn Assassin's Lessons about the Financial Crisis
A career as CIA problem solver opens up some interesting insights into human motivation and the games we play to justify our actions.
View ArticleWall Street Pay Caps, Ayn Rand and the Tyranny of Self-Interest
The populist uproar is deafening regarding the excessive salaries and bonuses on Wall Street. Over $18 billion in bonuses paid to Wall Street barons in 2008--big rewards for total and utter failure,...
View ArticleSenate Amnesty Hearing - Greenspan Wants More H-1Bs
As anticipated, Thursday's Senate "amnesty" hearing was heavily stacked with Open Borders enthusiasts. Alan Greenspan, the man who brought you world-wide economic collapse, favors illegals and more...
View ArticleMusical Regulatory Chairs at SEC and FRB
Bloomberg TV reported that the Obama Administration is planning to strip the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of some of its regulatory powers and give them to the Federal Reserve Bank (FRB)....
View ArticleMark Twain Was an Economist Too
Yes Virginia, Samuel Langhorne Clemens had an economist streak about him. The following quotation from Clemens’ A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is as fitting a statement in these times as...
View ArticleFinancial Products Safety Commission
The idea of the Commission is based on the model of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which doesn't care about a company's campaign donations when it considers lead paint in toys. They don't care...
View ArticleThe art of snatching defeat out of victory - Part IV
This is the continuation of my series about the economy, health care and the budgetary restrictions of the Obama agenda. The next three entries will address health care reform inside this context.
View ArticleLunching in the Valley of the Sun
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was trying to relieve a lot of peoples anxieties yesterday in DC. Its nice to know that former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan was putting the ditto on Geithner's...
View ArticleIMF: Quantitative Easing Works?
Quantitative easing, or the practice of the central bank printing money during the bursting of debt bubbles, comes in for a lot of criticism. Usually the two kinds of criticism that it comes in for are...
View ArticleBad, Bad, Brooksley Born
Last night on PBS' Frontline we saw "The Warning" wherein we meet Brooksley Born, Chair of the obscure and powerless Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) under President Clinton. Stanford Law...
View ArticleDamning Facts in Frontline: The Warning
I didn't know until I watched Frontline: The Warning on PBS last night that: In 1998, Clinton's economic team (Greenspan, Rubin, Summers, Geitner) engineered a rescue of Long Term Capital Management...
View ArticleAsk Alan Greenspan about Surpluses
Alan Greenspan was on Meet the Press this morning, and David Gregory asked him if ongoing deficits were a threat to our superpower status. Greenspan said yes, and went on at some length about the...
View ArticleGreenspan Gives himself a C
So Alan Greenspan defended his record as Chairman of the Fed by saying he was right seventy percent of the time. Where I went to school, that was barely a C. Not good enough from the most powerful...
View ArticleFinancial Markets: A Failure of Capitalism?
Cross-Posted at the Corporate Justice Blog In 2008 testimony to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in the days following the failure of Lehman Brothers, former Federal Bank chair...
View ArticleWeekly Audit: How Deregulation Fueled Goldman Sachs’ Scam
by Zach Carter, Media Consortium blogger Last week, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed fraud charges against Goldman Sachs and underscored what most Americans have believed for some time:...
View ArticleDivided We Fall: Thoughts on Free Speech in the Era of Scorched-Earth Politics
There's an extra gain the fomenters of divisiveness get in return for making political discussion something to be yelled and irrationally approached.
View ArticleThe Fed Has Effectively Adopted Sharia Law
The Ground Zero Mosque debate is silly. The opponents argue that having any Mosque in NYC at all is giving the ‘terrorists’ a chance to recruit American hating suicide bombers. Let’s remember that...
View ArticleAlan Grayson Calls for a Press Conference Tomorrow, 10:30 am PST.
Maybe, he isn't you cup of tea, maybe he isn't all 'pretty and smiley and just right' for your belief in what passes these days, as a true progressive candidate (few are left, few are being listened...
View Articleeffective leadership
I was a NYC teacher for 37 years, but this diary is only tangentially about education--it's about leadership. In addition to my classroom responsibilities, I was often the chapter chair--union leader...
View ArticleCNBC Fails To Ask Greenspan About the FCIC Report: An Honest Oversight?
The FCIC report assigned much of the blame for the financial crisis to Alan Greenspan, who appeared on CNBC to trash financial reform. For the better part of an hour, four CNBC reporters avoided any...
View ArticleFT eviscerates false Alan Greenspan claims on bank reform
As if Greenspan were not feeble enough already he is sounding off on FinReg these days - Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman, has attacked the Dodd-Frank financial reforms warning they...
View ArticleThe Corporation is Not a Nice Person
ROMNEY: Corporations are people, my friend. If the corporation is a person than he/she is a sociopathic, unpatriotic, greedy, narcissistic, environment killing, soul crushing and just a plain, evil...
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Tar Sands and Tar Heroin
The Tar Sands are America’s tar heroin. We are junkies in search of a fix. We don’t care if it’s the bottom of the barrel drug or the deadly threat it might pose to our health, we are addicted and...
View ArticleUnderstating the CPI, or Starving Grandma 101
The CPI is the Consumer Price Index.It is a measure by the BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics) to measure Inflation.In the 1880's the Bureau of Labor was asked by Congress to measure the impact of new...
View ArticleRelax! Bond Vigilantes Don't Exist, and They Never Did Exist
Okay, admittedly, the title is purposely provocative. Depending on how you define “bond vigilante”, and what government bond market you're talking about, they actually very much do exist. But the way...
View ArticleMy Journey as a 9/11 Republican Turned Modern Progressive
This is a little essay I have been working on in my spare time to try and flesh out how and why I started off as a Republican, and the journey toward becoming a Progressive. It's a break from the...
View ArticleHow will Sanders react when the GOP attack ads begin?
A video diary. Once Bernie wins a few more states, and when he begins to more seriously threaten the nomination, we might see an uptick in the usage of old speeches from youtube used in a negative...
View ArticleChomsky says Republican party is "The Most Dangerous Organization in World...
C.J. Polychroniou over at Truth-Out interviewed Noam Chomsky after the election: Trump in the White HouseChomsky started out talking about the enormous dangers posed by Climate Change to humanity as a...
View ArticleEven Alan Greenspan now advocates raising taxes...
I don’t have much to add to thus other than it has become so obvious that we need to raise taxes to battle the income disparity in this country than none other than Alan Greenspan now advocates it....
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