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This is a refreshing, and chilling little video making the rounds this week. The fact that the cute anime doglets are so affect constrained is part of its charm. I liked at about 4:50 where this exchange takes place: Girl: Is this an episode of the Twilight Zone? Guy: I don’t think so. Girl: Are you Sure? . . . → Read More: Ben Bernank and the Goldman Sacks One must wonder if banks have totally escaped the possibility of being regulated by states. I was pondering the current Irish problem, the amount owed to banks outside of Ireland shows the immense set of dominos that could fall in Europe. A sovereign default would not have as great an impact, as a risk-flaring contagion impacting countries’ primary financial entities, whose assets account in some cases for multiples of host GDP. It seems to me that the regulators of the banks are in some ways more influential than the Ministers of Finance. They potentially have sway over multiples of GDP assets. But can they avoid ‘capture’ by the mentality of the banks and provide regulation that can contain risk? . . . → Read More: Can banks be regulated by nation-states? Julie Cresweill in Dealbook has a report on the sales of troubled assets. It is the biggest rummage sale in Wall Street history — what one investment company calls “the Great Liquidation.” Two years after Washington rescued Wall Street, hundreds of billions of dollars of bad investments — in many cases, the same ones that poisoned banks and then the economy — are . . . → Read More: The Great Liquidation begins: some will profit nicely and it won’t be you The fact that we have a jobless recovery has been lost on no one. But the scope of the recovery in corporate profits is better than I had thought. Economix reports that they have rebounded to all time highs and has a nice graph as well: And while companies are doing well poverty has increased in America as well. The Economix reports: . . . → Read More: Corporate profits reach record high; poverty highest since 1959 the US Army is now deploying the Abrams M1 tank for the first time in the Afghan war. “The tanks bring awe, shock and firepower,” an officer says. And recalling Vietnam’s ironic dismissal of the misuse of too much firepower “We had to destroy the village in order to save it,” another officer argues that blowing up Afghan homes and fields “connects the government to the people.” . . . → Read More: Afghanistan: Connecting the government to the people I have read it through and found lots more interesting stuff from House testimony by Adam J. Levitin Associate Professor of Law Georgetown University Law Center. I have excerpted some of what I think are the best bits here: . . . → Read More: Foreclosure-gate: Servicers dupe investors, defraud homeowners So what I postulated in an earlier post, that the banks have positive incentives to foreclose and not to modify loans has now been said in House testimony by Adam J. Levitin Associate Professor of Law Georgetown University Law Center (thanks to James Kwak Baseline Scenario for alerting us to this): The servicing problems stem from servicers’ failed business model. Servicers are primarily . . . → Read More: House Committee hearings on foreclosure-gate Clear and uncontested property rights are the foundation of the housing market. If these rights fall into question, that foundation could collapse…the housing market could experience even greater disruptions than have already occurred, resulting in significant harm to major financial institutions…. a Wall Street bank [could] discover that, due to shoddily executed paperwork, it still owns millions of defaulted mortgages that it thought it sold off years ago, it could face billions of dollars in unexpected losses. . . . → Read More: Congressional Oversight Panel sounds alarm on Forclosure-gate Delong’s Apologeia says: what we needed more of in the run up to the Great Recession was more NINJA loans peddled by unscrupulous mortgage ‘originators’, what we need now is more foreclosures, what we need now is more QE2 money creating asset bubbles in foreign economies via the carry trade… What we need now in short is whatever the princes of Wall Street (and other people in the know) deem will pay outsized rewards. OMG . . . → Read More: Brad Delong’s Apologeia Trade and currency wars will exacerbate all tensions in the world leading to greater global conflict – perhaps even a real war. I expect this (perhaps only a vain hope) to be at a low level, but we may see a belligerent move from some countries who feel pressured in this new international game of chicken. . . . → Read More: First slips down the slope… |
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