Month: October 2010

economics

Fixing the financial system

We are in trouble, the entire west is in trouble, in substantial part because the financial system has been leaking a lot of money.  So has every other part of the governing apparatus, but the financial system is the biggest hole in the bucket. Now a lot of people are saying that this is a …

economics

hyperinflation of the US$

A great storm first manifest as clouds on the horizon. The Republicans are going to wish they had not won the 2010 November elections. Supposedly US inflation is near zero, yet food, fuel, and heating oil has risen substantially. Gonzalo points out Grains as a class have risen over 33% year-over-year. Refined oil products have …

politics

Sarah Palin proposes an insignificantly tiny reform

Sarah Palin proposes an insignificantly tiny reform. The impressed response to Sarah Palin’s suggestion, the horde of blogs thrilled by her suggestion, shows how rare such suggestions are. She suggests a tiny move rightwards, while normally the extreme right wing of the Republican party merely proposes that we move leftwards at a slightly slower rate.

economics

Elections do not matter.

The most extreme of the “right wing” candidates are proposing measures far too feeble to make a difference. Consider for example, the mortgage scandal. Where is the candidate that suggests that to fix our financial system, the bums (the entire financial sector of wall street and the regulators to which they are connected by a …

economics

The whitewash proceeds

One of the bigger criminals in the mortgage scam was Former Countrywide CEO Mozilo.  The SEC has made a symbolic settlement with him and a couple of his accomplices for seventy two million dollars, not a dime of which he has to pay personally, and which would be peanuts even if he had to pay …

economics

The enormous mortgage-bond scandal

Felix Salmon has found an interesting document in the financial crisis inquiry hearings. It seems the banks not only knew that the loans they were selling to investors generally failed to meet underwriting standards, they were so careless as to have documents lying around saying so in plain English. Seems like they were a bank …