MetaFilter posts tagged with economy and banking

There's a lot of bullshit coming from America

vidur — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 19:45:18 -0800

"Of the top 100 Swiss companies, 49 give shareholders a consulting vote on the pay of executives. A few other countries, including the United States and Germany, have introduced advisory "say on pay" votes in response to the anger over inequality and corporate excess that drove the Occupy Wall Street movement. Britain is also planning to implement rules in late 2013 that will give shareholders a binding vote on pay and "exit payments" at least every three years. Minder's initiative goes further, forcing all listed companies to have binding votes on compensation for company managers and directors, and ban golden handshakes and parachutes. It would also ban bonus payments to managers if their companies are taken over, and impose severe penalties — including possible jail sentences and fines — for breaches of these new rules."

"Victory as recorded on those screens made them feel like Masters of the Universe."

Fizz — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 07:41:36 -0800

Eunuchs of the Universe: Tom Wolfe on Wall Street Today: [Daily Beast]

"As America teeters on a cliff, Tom Wolfe draws up a sterling indictment of our unscrupulous financial culture. Twenty-five years after Bonfire of the Vanities, the author returns to Wall Street to see what happened to the Masters of the Universe."

"how we learned to stop worrying and embrace the abstraction"

the man of twists and turns — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 06:43:00 -0800

A Brief History Of Money Philip Pilkington: Debt And Decay And The Myth Of Liberal Individualism

Money, for example, is a mythic or fetish object and most people know that it is ultimately just bits of old paper and metal. But in our day-to-day intercourse we treat money as a sacred object with mythic properties – we defend it, hoard it, accumulate it. And yet, at some level we know that it is ultimately just bits of old paper and metal. In this very real sense we repress the reality of money – we render it unconscious – in order to allow it assume its mythic and social function. If we did not do this, and instead simply treated it as scraps of paper and lumps of useless metal, the entire social economy would collapse.

Escape From Minus World

By fixing some daily element of human relations into a tradable thing banks made it plausible to imagine one day being freed from those relationships. The central storehouse became both a crude symbol of security — grain insured by gods and masonry — and its general currency an icon of hope for people who might someday free themselves from the dead weight of their neighbors.

The Impact Of Money On An African Subsistence Economy (PDF)

Abracadabra, No More Banking Crisis

COD — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 10:48:04 -0800

IMF Economists are suggesting that The Chicago Plan, first proposed in 1936 as a way to avoid another Great Depression, is the answer to our current economic woes. Specifically, they studied the (theoretical) primary benefits of The Chicago Plan and found all 4 would likely result from the adoption of this system in the US. (1)Much better control of a major source of business cycle fluctuations, sudden increases and contractions of bank credit and of the supply of bank-created money. (2) Complete elimination of bank runs. (3) Dramatic reduction of the (net) public debt. (4) Dramatic reduction of private debt, as money creation no longer requires simultaneous debt creation. Link to the source paper, which includes a prominent disclaimer that this is a working paper and represents the opinions of the author, not the IMF.

Brother, can you spare a dime?

infini — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 03:23:33 -0800

The National Bureau of Economic Research has published a new paper analyzing 138 years of economic history in 14 advanced economies, which proves that high levels of private debt cause severe recessions. (Via) Bonus SLYT: Money As Debt (1hr)

Trust Issues

reenum — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 08:33:54 -0800

Hartwick College, a small school in New York's Catskills, is the beneficiary of a trust that “could ultimately shatter the nation’s financial structure.”

The 25-Year 'Foreclosure From Hell'

reenum — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 12:20:26 -0800

Patsy Campbell has been fighting her foreclosure in Florida courts for the past 25 years. She has not made a mortgage payment since 1985 while foiling the efforts of several banks to evict her from her home in Okeechobee, Florida.

Simon Johnson on the Economy

HP LaserJet P10006 — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 13:25:00 -0800

Last week, economist Simon Johnson (his blog; previously on MeFi) spoke at the Roosevelt Institute about the failure to regulate the financial industry, and the doomsday cycle of our economy (via).

The Potential Power of Organized People

HP LaserJet P10006 — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 18:30:29 -0800

Amid the financial headlines (about new banking reforms, more bank failures, the need for more lending by the fat-cats, the question of whether a European-style bonus-tax might be possible here, and the shrinking of the middle class), on PBS yesterday Bill Moyers wondered, in an in-depth segment (with organizers from here and here), whether a new wave of populist economic activism is perhaps, despite all odds, beginning to make a dent after all.

Economic mess gets messier?

GreyFoxVT — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 05:33:27 -0800

Looks like Paul Volker is attempting to bring some sanity back to the U.S. banking industry, as adviser to the Obama administration. But is anybody listening?

Dating A Banker Anonymous

ColdChef — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 09:54:37 -0800

Dating A Banker Anonymous Are you or someone you love dating a banker? If so, we are here to support you through these difficult times. Dating A Banker Anonymous (DABA) is a safe place where women can come together – free from the scrutiny of feminists– and share their tearful tales of how the mortgage meltdown has affected their relationships. Via

Special Bail Out Offer, No Payments Until January 20th

Xurando — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 15:21:25 -0800

Have we jumped over all the hurdles in our ongoing economic fiasco? Probably not, the next hurdle is Credit Cards. "More is coming, I’m sorry to say. Layoffs are being announced nationwide in the tens of thousands. As people begin to lose their jobs, they will not be able to pay their credit card bills either. And the banks will be back for more handouts."

Mortgaging America

ornate insect — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 11:15:54 -0800

America's for sale. Just ask Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. With the U.S. economy in shambles, Paulson just spent four days touring the Middle East, hat in hand, looking for investors to bail us out. Specifically, on Monday, Paulson met with heads of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, the world's largest "sovereign wealth fund" with roughly $875 billion in assets, and encouraged them to buy American businesses. Mortgaging America by Eric J. Weiner (LA Times Op Ed) What are Sovereign Wealth Funds? According to the article: "Sovereign wealth funds, or SWFs, basically are mutual funds that invest the excess capital generated by a region or country. The first one was established by Kuwait when it still was a British territory. After World War II, as Kuwait was negotiating independence, its leader, Sheik Abdullah al Salem al Sabah, asked the British to help him create a fund that would invest the nation's oil profits. The Kuwait Investment Board, which eventually became the Kuwait Investment Authority, today has about $250 billion in assets and is one of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world.... (snip) In 1990, the funds held just $500 billion in assets combined. Today, that figure is about $3.5 trillion. For comparison purposes, that's more than all of the assets controlled by all of the hedge funds in the world. And by 2012, the figure will be at least $10 trillion, according to estimates by the International Monetary Fund...." A congressional task force on soverign wealth funds (SWFs) will will speak at a Capitol Hill briefing sponsored by the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations today, and "one of the goals of the task force is to avoid 'any unforeseen political reactions to their investments.'" This is critical, because, according to this article, "the Kuwait Investment Authority has said it might raise its stakes in Citigroup and Merrill Lynch, signalling a vote of confidence in US investing. [It may be Lehman Bros. that needs the cash infusion, however.] Kuwait’s statements in London could indicate that Gulf sovereign funds are convinced that protectionist rhetoric in the US won’t jeopardise their investments." [Emphasis added]. The WSJ has quoted Paulson as saying that the U.S. would like to "benefit from sovereign-wealth-fund investments," provided that a set of "credible best practices" is followed by such funds: "Among some sovereign-wealth-fund managers, our initiative has raised concerns that we are trying to limit the scope of their activities or release privileged information," Mr. Paulson said. "In fact, our purpose is just the opposite. We are trying to quell calls for restrictions by urging sovereign-wealth funds to endorse best practices to create a dynamic rise to the top and help allay concerns about opacity and systemic risks," he added. Meanwhile, Harvard economist and former IMF economist Kenneth Rogoff wonders if it makes sense "for...Paulson to be touring the Middle East supporting the region's hard dollar exchange-rate pegs, while the Bush administration simultaneously blasts Asian countries for not letting their currencies appreciate faster against the dollar?," and suggests "the US should be supporting the International Monetary Fund's behind-the-scenes efforts to promote de-linking of oil currencies and the dollar." Also meanwhile, "Worries about the health of the U.S. financial system, on the decline since mid-March, have snapped back as investors brace for more big loan losses at Lehman Brothers and other large investment banks..." Worries about the Credit Default Swap (CDS) Market remain, as well as about record home foreclosure levels. Banks are very hesitant to loan right now, and "US banks fear accounting changes could impact lending as they force $5 trillion of assets back on to their balance sheets." Some argue that the economic ripple effect from the credit crisis is far from over: "What began with the repackaging of subprime loans into AAA rated securities is unraveling on Main Street, wreaking havoc with businesses and lives far from New York, as house prices continue to fall and foreclosures rise. That, in turn, means more bad news for banks...."

We must pay attention to bubbles

languagehat — Sun, 03 Aug 2003 12:20:50 -0800

Argentina Didn't Fall on Its Own. (Single-page, printer-friendly version here.) I don't normally read long articles on economic subjects, but this one is riveting, because it links Argentina's collapse to larger issues of how the world of money works today.

"The time has come to do our mea culpa," Hans-Joerg Rudloff, chairman of the executive committee at Barclays Capital, said at a conference of bank and brokerage executives in London a few months ago. "Argentina obviously stands as much as Enron" in showing that "things have been done and said by our industry which were realized at the time to be wrong, to be self-serving."

...It is like "a bizarre AA program in which you remove booze from the homes of people who are reducing the amount they drink and put it into the homes of people who are drinking more every day," Pettis said. "This is probably not the best way to reduce drunkenness."

Post a great earnings quarter then

Macboy — Tue, 22 Oct 2002 19:56:51 -0800

Post a great earnings quarter then cut jobs and send them to India. Nice job Bank of AMERICA

Reality check from Swiss Re and UNEP

troutfishing — Wed, 09 Oct 2002 15:02:29 -0800

Reality check from Swiss Re and UNEP "The increasing frequency of severe climatic events...has the potential to stress insurers, reinsurers and banks to the point of impaired viability or even insolvency." "Climate Change and the Financial Services Industry", a UNEP report supported by 295 banks and insurance and investment companies around the world. The report concludes that, worldwide, loses from Climate related disasters are doubling every decade . NOAA generally concurs. Dr. Bob Gagosian, Director of Woods Hole, has even worse news. Should we take the scientific mainstream seriously? Or is it all "Junk Science"according to the industry funded Steve Milloy or the CEI, or even a New Age Pagan Conspiracy? Play on little humans......play on.....