61 thoughts on “Monday Message Board”

  1. i would like to draw attention to comments made by Joseph Stiglitz in the last few days.
    I was recently ridiculed for suggesting that the US Fed was essentially a private bank, opaque and untrustworthy,
    It seems to me that Stiglitz shares some of my concerns

    One of the world’s leading economists said Wednesday that the very structure of the Federal Reserve system is so fraught with conflicts that it’s “corrupt.”
    “If we had seen a governance structure that corresponds to our Federal Reserve system, we would have been yelling and screaming and saying that country does not deserve any assistance, this is a corrupt governing structure”
    To Stiglitz, the core issue is that regional Fed banks, such as the New York Fed, have clear conflicts of interest – a result of the banks being partly governed by a board of directors that includes officers of the very banks they’re supposed to be overseeing.
    The New York Fed, which was led by current Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner during the time leading Wall Street firms like Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, AIG, and Goldman Sachs were given hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer bailouts, presently has on its board of directors Jamie Dimon, the head of JPMorgan Chase. He’s been there for three years. He replaced former Citigroup chairman Sanford “Sandy” Weill.

  2. and since i have nowhere else to put these things

    LTCM used fatally flawed VaR risk models. LTCM used too much leverage. LTCM transacted in unregulated over-the-counter derivatives instead of exchange traded derivatives. So risk models needed to be changed, or abandoned. Leverage had to be slashed. Derivatives had to be traded on exchanges or cleared through clearinghouses. Regulatory oversight needed to be ramped up…
    The government did just the opposite.     Glass-Steagall was repealed in 1999, so that banks could become hedge funds.
    – James Rickards, former General Counsel of Long-Term Capital Management

    i search and search for regulation and response to crisis but all i ever seem to find is the opposite,
    at each crisis, risk and the space for systemic fraud and disaster are increased,
    even now despite all the talk,
    the massive banks got bigger, and no meaningful change to the unregulated derivatives markets is anywhere in sight

  3. what the hell,
    i know most of you dont appreciate my links or effort and certainly john never seems to acknowledge a single input i make, but nonetheless,

    Barry C. Lynn’s recent book … arises directly from the old antitrust tradition, and it presents us with an amazing catalogue of present-day monopolies, oligopolies and economic combinations.
    Mr. Lynn tells us, for example, about the power of single companies or small groups of companies over such disparate fields as eyeglasses, certain categories of pet food, washer-dryer sales, auto parts, many aspects of food processing, surfboards, medical syringes…
    Mr. Lynn … describes companies that swallow their rivals and then, with competitive pressure diminished, set about “destroying product variety and diversity.” … We learn of entire industries where competitors have grown so close to one another that a collapse at one company would probably bring down many of the others as well.
    http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2010/03/a-new-age-of-monopolies.html

    most of the people who defend free-market capitalism seem to have no idea that it does not exist,
    it is an powerful myth,
    and the main beneficiaries of this powerful myth are the top 1%,
    whatever you do though, keep on denying that there is a class system,
    and keep on with that glorious rubbish about equal opportunity for all

  4. Mr. Lynn also takes pains to demonstrate that the economic “freedom” so beloved by the snake-flag set has actually yielded the opposite of freedom: a “neofeudal” system of “private corporate governments” answerable to no one …

    private corporate government is of course also known as fascism

  5. At least Professor Quiggin should consider restoring smiths’ very brief deleted post @ 49, if not my larger post @ 50.

    I found it very funny.

  6. I’m glad you enjoyed it, and maybe if you hadn’t piled on, I would have left it.

    But I am not allowing this blog to become a forum for Trutherism. There are plenty of websites covering this topic, and those interested can easily find them.

  8. JQ, this “trutherism”, you could give us a definition?
    Actually, just googled it up and found a good expose of it from one Monica Bauerline, of the US site “Mother Jones”, from about a year ago.
    To me it seemed a relevant addition to people’s understanding of the last decade, most of all for a didactic pol economy site, particularly in light of the summary offered of the Bush Cheney Murdoch phenomena.
    Well done smiths, for having the persistence to identify and contest Andrew Reynolds and the points of his explanation.

  9. well michael, i have to admit i dont know enough about it to know what possible limitations it might have but it certainly sounds good and quite straight forward,
    i think its quite clear from reading over the last few years that the problems with monetary system are obvious, and workable realistic alternatives are there for the trying,
    the immediate problem is that the aggressively parasitic banking corporations are diametrically opposed to any meaningful solutions,
    limitless debt and an umbilical chord attached to the taxpayer is too sweet to give up,
    they are far more powerful than most realize,
    they are in cahoots with the media and military industrial complex,
    and not a thing will change until they strangle ordinary people to the point where people do what they have done before,
    use their numbers to force change

  10. on ‘trutherism’ i read a funny comment a few years back which signaled the tragi/comic high water mark for me

    original sin was an inside job

    whilst i agree that it is relevant and i urge people to read into it, blog discussions of it do degenerate very quickly and usually produce little of value,
    i suspect that it will be a good 10 or 15 years before it can be discussed sensibly
    and thanks Paul

  11. While we are at it, will express my support for Dagget’s protests against certain sites practicing quite inconsistent, erratic moderation.

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