I just read Chain of Blame, How Wall Street Caused the Mortgage Crisis“. Financial reporters Paul Muolo and Mathew Padilla do a laudable job of describing the mortgage mess and how it happened. Long story short: it seems that Wall Street’s best and brightest transformed a heretofore niche market for subprime and non-conventional loans into [...]
Entries Tagged as ‘economics’
March 16, 2009
Cooperation
One thing that mystifies me about the current economic crisis is the inability of the big banks to get their house in order. Or the inability of us (the government) to force them to get their house in order. We are not talking about very many banks: Citi, Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo. [...]
March 12, 2009
Whew
What an unbelievable relief to have Peter Orszag at the Office of Management and Budget. Here he is introducing Obama’s first budget:
“The single most important thing we can do to improve the long-term fiscal health of our nation is to slow the growth in healthcare costs. …the path to fiscal responsibility must pass directly through [...]
March 11, 2009
Earmarks
Big news of the day (via AP):
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama, sounding weary of criticism over federal earmarks, defended Congress’ pet projects Wednesday as he signed an “imperfect” $410 billion measure with thousands of examples. But he said the spending does need tighter restraint and listed guidelines to do it. Obama, accused of hypocrisy by [...]
March 7, 2009
Upside down
According to the this chart from Calculated Risk 55% of homeowners in Nevada owe more on their house than it’s worth.
Somewhere I’ve read that 20-30% of homeowners do not have a mortgage, so it’s not this many homeowners who are upside down on their home. Still, it’s a lot of people! And what happened in [...]
February 24, 2009
Feeding the Myth
What is the deal with Martin Feldstein? He’s a conservative economist, but unlike the political funtionairies now operating what passes for a conservative party in this country, Feldstein understands that the government cannot just stand back and let the market work its magic. He understands that our economy faces a crisis, that government spending is [...]
February 16, 2009
Quote of the Day
Jonathan Chait on the need for government spending, wasteful or not:
The point of stimulus spending… is simply to spend money–on something useful if possible, wasteful if necessary. Keynes proposed burying money in mineshafts, so that workers would be hired to dig it out. (Imagine what the GOP could do with material like [...]
February 14, 2009
The Banking Fiasco
I see Congress added a provision to the stimulus bill limiting CEO bonuses and the compensation of “all highly paid individuals at the 359 banks that are receiving government aid.” According to the NY Times, industry insiders are worried:
“This is a big deal. This is a problem,” said Scott Talbott, chief lobbyist for the nation’s [...]
February 10, 2009
Fish Barriers
Republicans are demonizing Obama’s stimulus bill because it’s wasteful. Yes, they say, we need the government to stimulate the economy, but this bill is just pork, not stimulus. To take one random example of this commentary, here’s the Buffalo News:
How many new economy-stimulating jobs will be created immediately, if at all, by the tacked-on $650 [...]
February 7, 2009
Zombie Republicans 3
Ron Paul joins the chorus of free market Republicans who don’t get it. According to CNN Paul posted a video on Youtube in which he “agrees that the economy needs to be stimulated but doesn’t think the federal government should be doing it.”
“Sure, we want more spending,” Paul said. “We need a lot more spending [...]
