MetaFilter posts tagged with gfc

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."

Level 2 is more worrisome. Level 3 is hair-raising.

vidur — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 18:12:28 -0800

"We decided to go on an adventure through the financial statements of one bank [Wells Fargo], to explore exactly what they do and do not show, and to gauge whether it is possible to make informed judgments about the risks the bank may be carrying. We chose a bank that is thought to be a conservative financial institution, and an exemplar of what a large modern bank should be."

What went wrong and how to fix it.

moorooka — Sat, 12 Jan 2013 13:54:45 -0800

Stimulus or Stymied?: The Macroeconomics of Recession: An American Economic Association panel discussion on the Great Recession between four leading economists - Paul Krugman (Princeton), Valerie Ramey (UCSD), Harald Uhlig (Chicago) and Carlo Cottarelli (IMF), chaired by Brad DeLong (Berkeley).

Pick your side. Pick your history.

vidur — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 19:42:37 -0800

"Some date the crisis to August 9 2007, the day it became clear that Europe’s banks were up to their necks in US housing debt. The ECB flooded markets with €95bn of liquidity. It seemed a lot of money then. The term “trillion” was still banned by the Telegraph style book in those innocent days. We have since learned to swing with the modern dance music from central banks." [Five years on, the Great Recession is turning into a life sentence]

LTCM Shall Have Its Revenge

JPD — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 07:27:31 -0800

MF Global - once mostly a Futures Broker and more recently a budding full-service Investment Bank run by ex-Governor/ex-Senator Jon Corzine has collapsed following ratings downgrades on the back of large losses on Eurozone Sovereign Debt. Trades that Corzine himself oversaw. It will be the 8th largest Bankruptcy in US History. Much of the blame is being placed on Corzine's efforts to recreate his old firm, Goldman Sachs. He was forced out as Goldman CEO post IPO by none other than Hank Paulson - the Secretary of Treasury who oversaw the creation of TARP. But there is a silver lining. To some commentators the MF collapse and the lack of contagion (so far - fingers crossed) is an argument in favor of both the Volcker Rule and Dodd-Frank's efforts to more sharply regulate the futures broking industry. As well as a statement on the value of having risk taking firms that are small enough to fail. That being said questions still remain- -$700 million in missing client funds - either from sloppy book keeping, or perhaps more nefariously diverted into MF's own trading book. Of course had they been segregating client assets per CFTC rules then the odds of the money being temporarily lost rather than diverted would be much higher. -Was this karmic revenge for the famously profitable double-dealing trading Corzine led during the collapse of John Meriwether's Long Term Capital Management? Background Reading:Why do Futures Brokers Blowup

A turning point in economic development?

Coventry — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 04:51:19 -0800

"Towards a Sustainable Global Golden Age" (four youtube links) is a talk by Carlota Perez comparing the current revolution in information and communications technologies (ICT) to four prior technological revolutions. She argues that each revolution has started with a long phase of experimentation driven by finance, which leads to a financial bubble and subsequent crash. The short phase of recovery from the crash is followed by a long phase of consolidation driven by concrete productivity gains and government policy. She believes that NASDAQ was the crash in the ICT revolution, and that we are still in the recovery phase, partly because cheap oil and manufacturing labor facilitated a reemphasis on unskilled-labor- and energy-intensive means of production. She speculates on what may come out of the consolidation phase she hopes we're now entering. I found this while I was deciding whether to read Tyler Cowen's essay, The Great Stagnation (discussed here on metafilter.) Perez has an inspiring message on a aspect of the world which often seems very gloomy, and she bases it on a historical analysis which seems quite plausible.

Guided By Your Counsel

moorooka — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 17:12:36 -0800

Jan 7: The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, then led by Timothy Geithner, told American International Group Inc. to withhold details from the public about the bailed-out insurer’s payments to banks during the depths of the financial crisis, e-mails between the company and its regulator show.

Obama's Big Sellout

moorooka — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 21:36:11 -0800

Taibbi-filter: Obama's Big Sellout What's taken place in the year since Obama won the presidency has turned out to be one of the most dramatic political about-faces in our history. Elected in the midst of a crushing economic crisis brought on by a decade of orgiastic deregulation and unchecked greed, Obama had a clear mandate to rein in Wall Street and remake the entire structure of the American economy. What he did instead was ship even his most marginally progressive campaign advisers off to various bureaucratic Siberias, while packing the key economic positions in his White House with the very people who caused the crisis in the first place. This new team of bubble-fattened ex-bankers and laissez-faire intellectuals then proceeded to sell us all out, instituting a massive, trickle-up bailout and systematically gutting regulatory reform from the inside.

Former PM keating talks GFC

wilful — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 15:28:43 -0800

Former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating provides some observations on the GFC, including suggestions that the USA could become a defaulter, and identifying a need for a new international settlement to replace Bretton Woods. This is one for the policy wonks. This isn't a post about Paul Keating the man, though I think he deserves one some time. The first half is probably of more interest for an international audience. PJK was previously on Lateline in October 2008 discussing the GFC. Further discussions on this blog.