RollingStone.com: Matt Taibbi | Taibblog Thu 2010-09-23 09:37 EDT

Bob Rubin Cuddles

Matt Taibbi

...No man's behavior looks attractive when he's cheating on his wife, but this little tell-all by a woman who had a sort-of fling with former Goldman chief and Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin is more than unusually embarrassing...The most disgusting (and revealing) part of the story is, to me, this part of Iris Mack's narrative... A multi-multi-millionaire giving a homeless guy a dollar on the way to the Ritz...if that isn't the perfect metaphor for the modern ``Third Way'' Democratic Party, I don't know what is...Bob Rubin's main job at Citi was to hang around and be available for his political connections. His job, as I understand it, was a sort of permanent, ongoing bribe...

Bob Rubin cuddle; com; Matt Taibbi; rollingstone; Taibblog.

Fabius Maximus Wed 2010-08-25 09:31 EDT

The face of America's decline

Fabius Maximus

...Mark Hurd, until recently CEO of HP. See the face of America's economic decline...from ``The Real Reason for Ousting H.P.'s Chief``, Joe Nocera, New York Times: [according to] Charles House, a former longtime H.P. engineer: The way H.P. made its numbers...was not just cutting any old costs, but by ``chopping R.&D.,'' which had always been sacred at H.P. The research and development budget used to be 9% of revenue, Mr. House told me; now it was closer to 2%. ``In the personal computer group, it is 0.7%''...Here we see America's formula for decline... 1. Fantastic pay for leaders 2. Stagnant pay for employees 3. Cutting jobs (efficiencies, forcing harder work, moving off-shore) 4. Slash investments in the future (capex, training, R&D)...

America s decline; Fabius Maximus; Faces.

New Deal 2.0 Sat 2010-07-24 15:59 EDT

The Trouble with Tim's Treasury

Marshall Auerback

...The Washington Post has reported that one of the major impacts of the FinReg bill passed last week by Congress is the accretion of new power to Obama's Treasury Secretary. According to the Post, Tim Geithner stands to inherit vast power to shape bank regulations, oversee financial markets and create a consumer protection agency...``The bill not only hews closely to the initial draft he released last summer but also anoints him -- as long as he remains Treasury secretary -- as the chief of a new council of senior regulators.'' ...

0; new dealing 2; Tim's Treasury; Troubles.

billy blog Thu 2010-07-15 16:58 EDT

We have been here before ...

The daily rhetoric being used to promote fiscal austerity maybe couched in the urgency of the day but we have heard it all before. In this blog I just reflect on history a little to remind the reader that previous attempts to carve public net spending, based on the ``expectations'' belief government was not going to tax everybody out of existence, failed to deliver. The expected spontaneous upsurge in private activity has never happened in the way the mainstream macroeconomic supply-siders predicted. Further, the chief proponents usually let it out in some way that the chief motivation for their vehement pursuit of budget cuts was to advance their ideological agendas. Of-course, the arguments used to justify the cuts were never presented as political or class-based. The public is easily duped. They have been in the past and they are being conned again now. My role is to keep providing the material and the arguments for the demand-side activists to take into the public debate...

Billy Blog.

billy blog Thu 2010-07-15 16:35 EDT

Employment gaps -- a failure of political leadership

Overnight a kind soul (thanks M) sent me the latest Goldman Sachs US Economist Analysis (Issue 10/27, July 9, 2010) written by their chief economist Jan Hatzius...It presents a very interesting analysis of the current situation in the US economy, using the sectoral balances framework, which is often deployed in Modern Monetary Theory (MMT)...some of the top players in the financial markets have a good understanding of the essentials of MMT...he US is likely to have to endure on-going and massive employment gaps (below potential) for years because the US government is failing to exercise leadership. The paper recognises the need for an expansion of fiscal policy of at least 3 per cent of GDP but concludes that the ill-informed US public (about deficits) are allowing the deficit terrorists to bully the politicians into cutting the deficit. The costs of this folly will be enormous...

Billy Blog; employment gap; failure; political leadership.

Mon 2010-05-24 10:11 EDT

Hussman Funds - Weekly Market Comment: Don't Mess with Aunt Minnie - May 24, 2010

John P. Hussman

...Last week, we observed an Aunt Minnie featuring a collapse in market internals that has historically been associated with sharply negative market implications....Treasury Secretary Eddie Haskell/Timothy Geithner has scheduled a trip to Europe this week to urge European leaders "to pay better attention to potential market reactions to policy moves, and to accelerate the European rescue program." This promises to be a fiasco. What could European leaders possibly find more arrogant than to be lectured on bailout policy - not simply by the U.S., but specifically by a one-trick pony bureaucrat whose chief trick is the ability to smoothly talk the language of prudence while simultaneously pillaging the fiscal stability of an entire nation for the benefit of bondholders who made bad loans?...Providing Greece (and possibly some of its neighbors) a graceful exit from the Euro requires greater courage but lower ultimate cost - particularly to the citizens of Greece itself - than a policy of forcing heavy austerity, dislocations, and internal deflation within Greece. The effect of austerity policies will be to damage the revenue side of the Grecian economy enough to leave the deficits little changed in any event. One would like to go back a decade in time and choose different policies that would have allowed Greece to maintain the Maastricht deficit limitations, but it is far too late to push a full-grown genie back into an itty-bitty bottle...

2010; 24; Aunt Minnie; Hussman Funds; Mess; weekly market comments.

naked capitalism Tue 2010-05-11 09:04 EDT

Richard Smith: Another Nail in the ``Hoocoodanode'' Defense, Circa April 2007

Richard Smith

Here's someone with his head screwed on, back in April 2007, who proves singlehandedly that ``hoocoodanode'' was no defense for failing to anticipate the implosion of the shadow banking system (more on this prescient analyst in due course)...So who is this fellow who got it, back in that mythical time when nobody knew what was going on? According to an email correspondent of mine, he is ``a no-name equity guy'' in London. Actually his name is Henry Maxey, and he is chief investment officer and chief executive elect of Ruffer LLP, a small London fund manager. So there's no chance of making him US Treasury Secretary or head of the NYFRB, I'm afraid...

Circa April 2007; defense; Hoocoodanode; nail; naked capitalism; Richard Smith.

Sat 2010-04-24 08:59 EDT

Rent-A-Front: New Group Wages Stealth Battle Against Wall Street Reform | TPMMuckraker

TPM Media

...every indication is that Stop Too Big To Fail is an astroturf operation funded by corporate interests to give the appearance of grassroots opposition to reform..."These guys made the KGB look like amateurs, and I used to work in Russia quite a lot," says Simon Johnson, a former chief economist at the IMF, now at MIT, who is a prominent advocate of breaking up the big banks...the group pays lip service to the idea of breaking up the big banks while at the same time adopting "bailout fund" rhetoric used by Republicans, all the while devoting its resources to trying to kill financial reform altogether...Stop Too Big To Fail co-founder Bob Johnson...is president of Consumers for Competitive Choice (C4CC), which runs Stop Too Big To Fail...Before C4CC was Consumers for Competitive Choice it was Consumers for Cable Choice. That group was funded by big telecoms like Verizon and fought to deregulate the cable industry...the man who reached out to economist Simon Johnson about joining the Stop Too Big To Fail call was Oliver Wolf, a director with the DCI Group. DCI is the Washington public affairs firm that specializes in astroturf efforts and has worked for everyone from the Burmese junta to the tobacco industry.

front; New Group Wages Stealth Battle; renting; TPMmuckraker; Wall Street reforms.

naked capitalism Wed 2010-04-21 12:20 EDT

Guest Post: Dodd Financial Reform Bill Is All Holes and No Cheese

George Washington

In a letter to Senate majority leader Harry Reid and minority leader Mitch McConnell, luminaries including former SEC Chief Accountant Lynn Turner, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, hedge fund owner Jim Chanos, former Lehman Brothers Vice Chair Peter Solomon, former S&L investigator Bill Black, former Senate Banking Committee Chief Economist Rob Johnson, economists Dean Baker, Barry Eichengreen and others pointed out that Dodd's proposed financial reform legislation wouldn't have prevented the current crisis ... and won't prevent the next crisis...

cheese; Dodd Financial reform Bill; Guest Post; holes; naked capitalism.

naked capitalism Sun 2010-02-28 13:23 EST

Rogoff Foresees A Wave of Sovereign Debt Defaults

Kenneth Rogoff, former IMF chief economist warned that a series of sovereign debt defaults is likely to be in the offing...Rogoff is far from alone in seeing sovereign defaults as likely, but so far, the chorus of concern comes mainly from analysts and investors rather than well-known economists (Willem Buiter was notable exception in that regard). One correspondent said that one of his sources, with impeccable contacts, anticipates 12 sovereign debt defaults in the EU...

naked capitalism; Rogoff Foresees; sovereign debt Default; wave.

naked capitalism Sun 2010-02-28 13:08 EST

Martin Wolf is Very Gloomy, and With Good Reason

Martin Wolf, the Financial Times' highly respected chief economics editor, weighs in with a pretty pessimistic piece tonight. This makes for a companion to Peter Boone and Simon Johnson's Doomsday cycle post from yesterday...With the private sector debt overhang as great as it is, I doubt there is a way out of our mess that does not involve a period of debt restructuring and writeoffs. That process, no matter how adeptly handled, results in dislocation and has a chilling effect on bystanders...Swedish Lex interestingly sees another possible brake that may become operative prior to another bubble/bust cycle. He believes that the EU has much less tolerance for underwriting zombie banks than the US. The EuroBanks have written off less in the way of losses than their US peers, are also exposed to any EU sovereign debt defaults, and yet the biggest are still crucial parts of the international capital markets infrastructure (and therefore still tightly coupled to the very biggest US/UK firms). While any EU sovereign debt defaults could morph into a full blown crisis, the EU responses to the joint sovereign/bank debt overhang could lead to more radical changes in EU banking rules and practices that could blow back to the very biggest US banks in unexpected ways.

gloomy; good reason; Martin Wolf; naked capitalism.

Taibblog Mon 2010-01-04 18:02 EST

There's always room for Goldman Sachs (at the SEC)

Matt Taibbi

The Securities and Exchange Commission hired a 29-year-old former employee in Goldman Sachs Group Inc.'s business intelligence unit as the first chief operating officer in the agency's enforcement division, according to people familiar with the decision. via SEC unit hires ex-Goldman Sachs worker as chief operating officer -- latimes.com.

Goldman Sachs; room; s; SEC; Taibblog.

Mon 2010-01-04 17:56 EST

Salon.com | Another Goldman executive named to key government post as its profits skyrocket

Glenn Greenwald

A Goldman Sachs executive has been named the first chief operating officer of the Securities and Exchange Commission's enforcement division. The market watchdog says Adam Storch, vice president in Goldman Sachs' Business Intelligence Group, is assuming the new position of managing executive of the SEC division.

com; Goldman executive named; key government post; profits skyrocket; Salon.

Jesse's Café Américain Mon 2009-12-28 16:22 EST

What Will the World Reserve Currency System Become? The Stakes Are Enormous

Jesse

The deterioration of the dollar reserve currency regime is obvious.If we have forecasted correctly, the world will look to some variation of the IMF's Special Drawing Rights as an eventual replacement for the US dollar. Therefore, the recomposition of the SDR next year will become a lightning rod for the global stresses created by an increasingly unstable and impractical system of global trade...A new global currency should replace the US dollar as the international reserve currency, as the long-term deterioration of America's economy and the greenback is fuelling a "currency-regime crisis," says Martin Wolf, associate editor and chief economics commentator of the Financial Times.

Enormous; Jesse's Café Américain; stake; World Reserve Currency System Become.

Wed 2009-12-16 15:38 EST

Gulf petro-powers to launch currency in latest threat to dollar hegemony - Telegraph

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

The Arab states of the Gulf region have agreed to launch a single currency modelled on the euro, hoping to blaze a trail towards a pan-Arab monetary union swelling to the ancient borders of the Ummayad Caliphate...``The US dollar has failed. We need to delink,'' said Nahed Taher, chief executive of Bahrain's Gulf One Investment Bank.

dollar hegemony; Gulf petro-powers; latest threat; launching currency; Telegraph.

Jesse's Café Américain Tue 2009-12-01 10:06 EST

Morgan Stanley Fears UK Default in 2010

Jesse

As you may recall we are bears on sterling, and view the UK as the Iceland of the G20.The monetary policies of the Bank of England were as bad as those of the Greenspan - Bernanke Fed. The difference is that the UK does not hold the world's reserve currency as a captive source of revenues. As an aside, we see that Bank of England advisor and economic franc-tireur Willem Buiter has decided to seek greener pastures as chief economist with Citi in the States. Timely exit. Bravo, Willem.

2010; Jesse's Café Américain; Morgan Stanley Fears UK Default.

zero hedge Mon 2009-10-26 09:28 EDT

How The Federal Reserve Bailed Out The World

The Bank of International Settlements [BIS] just released a major paper titled "The US dollar shortage in global banking and the international policy response" which goes on to demonstrate just how it happened that Fed chief Ben Bernanke in essence bailed out the entire developed world, which was facing an unprecedented dollar shortage crisis due to the sudden implosion of FX swap lines and other mechanisms which until that point were critical in maintaining the dollar funding shortfall for virtually every foreign Central Bank...When the financial system almost imploded in the fall of 2008, one of the primary responses by the Federal Reserve was the issuance of an unprecedented amount of FX liquidity lines in the form of swaps to foreign Central Banks. The number went from practically zero to a peak of $582 billion on December 10, 2008. The number of swaps outstanding was almost directly inversely correlated with the value of the dollar...what happened is that short-term sources to sustain the massive dollar funding mismatch disappeared virtually overnight, and CBs were suddenly facing a toxic spiral of selling increasingly more worthless assets merely to satisfy currency funding needs in an environment where all of a sudden nobody was willing to provide FX swap lines...had the Fed not stepped in, the rest of the world...would have simply collapsed as the $6.5 trillion dollar funding gap closed in on itself, causing a indiscriminate selling off of all dollar denominated assets. The implosion of the basis trade would have seemed like a picnic compared to what was about to ensue had the Fed not stepped in to perpetuate the Fiat banking way of life.

Federal Reserve bail; world; Zero Hedge.

Jesse's Café Américain Fri 2009-10-23 19:27 EDT

Matt Taibbi: Wall Street's Naked Swindle

Jesse

This is worth reading. Wall Street's Naked Swindle by Matt Taibbi. Closing quote from this story: "The new president for whom we all had such high hopes went and hired Michael Froman, a Citigroup executive who accepted a $2.2 million bonus after he joined the White House, to serve on his economic transition team -- at the same time the government was giving Citigroup a massive bailout. Then, after promising to curb the influence of lobbyists, Obama hired a former Goldman Sachs lobbyist, Mark Patterson, as chief of staff at the Treasury. He hired another Goldmanite, Gary Gensler, to police the commodities markets. He handed control of the Treasury and Federal Reserve over to Geithner and Bernanke, a pair of stooges who spent their whole careers being bellhops for...

Jesse's Café Américain; Matt Taibbi; Wall Street's Naked Swindle.

Jesse's Café Américain Tue 2009-10-13 20:23 EDT

Central Banks More Aggressively Reducing US Dollar Exposure In Their Reserve Portfolios

Jesse

``Global central banks are getting more serious about diversification, whereas in the past they used to just talk about it,'' said Steven Englander, a former Federal Reserve researcher who is now the chief U.S. currency strategist at Barclays in New York. ``It looks like they are really backing away from the dollar.''

aggressively reduced; central bank; Dollar exposure; Jesse's Café Américain; reserve portfolios.

The Guardian World News Mon 2009-10-12 10:04 EDT

Kaupthing chief named as suspect

Iceland's most controversial banker, Sigurdur Einarsson, the former executive chairman of failed bank Kaupthing, has been made an official suspect by fraud prosecutors examining alleged market manipulation relating to an investment in the bank by Qatari royal Sheikh Mohammed Bin Khalifa al-Thani weeks before its collapse a year ago.

Guardian World News; Kaupthing chief named; Suspected.

The Big Picture Sun 2009-10-11 16:08 EDT

Kaptur & Johnson on Bill Moyers

Former International Monetary Fund chief economist Simon Johnson and US Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) report on the state of the economy... MARCY KAPTUR: Think about what these banks have done. They have taken very imprudent behavior, irresponsible. They have really gambled, all right? And in many cases, been involved in fraudulent activity. And then when they lost, they shifted their losses to the taxpayer. So, if you look at an instrumentality like the F.H.A., the Federal Housing Administration. They used to insure one of every 50 mortgages in the country. Now it's one out of four. MARCY KAPTUR: Because what they're doing is they're taking their mistakes and they're dumping them on the taxpayer. So, you and I, and the long term debt of our country and our children and grandchildren. It's all at risk because of their behavior. We aren't reigning them in. The laws of Congress passed last year in terms of housing, were hollow. ... SIMON JOHNSON: And Rahm Emanuel, the President's Chief of Staff has a saying. He's widely known for saying, `Never let a good crisis go to waste'. Well, the crisis is over, Bill. The crisis in the financial sector, not for people who own homes, but the crisis for the big banks is substantially over. And it was completely wasted. The Administration refused to break the power of the big banks, when they had the opportunity, earlier this year. And the regulatory reforms they are now pursuing will turn out to be, in my opinion, and I do follow this day to day, you know. These reforms will turn out to be essentially meaningless.

Big Picture; Bill Moyers; Johnson; Kaptur.

Calculated Risk Sat 2009-10-10 13:33 EDT

FHA Bailout Seen

CalculatedRisk

From Bloomberg: FHA Shortfall Seen at $54 Billion May Lead to Bailout...The Federal Housing Administration, which insures mortgages with low down payments, may require a U.S. bailout because of $54 billion more in losses than it can withstand, a former Fannie Mae executive said. ``It appears destined for a taxpayer bailout in the next 24 to 36 months,'' consultant Edward Pinto said in testimony prepared for a House committee hearing in Washington today. Pinto was the chief credit officer from 1987 to 1989 for Fannie Mae...

Calculated Risk; FHA Bailout Seen.

zero hedge Sat 2009-10-10 13:09 EDT

Former Fannie Chief Credit Officer Says FHA Is $54 Billion Underwater

In keeping with the warnings presented by Kyle Bass warned that the entire housing bubble is now being ported over to the taxpayer's balance sheet, Edward Pinto, a former chief credit officer for Fannie Mae claims that the Federal Housing Administration will likely require a major taxpayer bailout "in the next 24 to 36 months" as it is likely to incur $56 billion more in losses than it can withstand.

54; Fannie Chief Credit Officer Says FHA; underwater; Zero Hedge.

Tue 2009-09-22 08:39 EDT

HSBC bids farewell to dollar supremacy - Telegraph

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

The sun is setting on the US dollar as the ultra-loose monetary policy of the US Federal Reserve forces China and the vibrant economies of the emerging world to forge a new global currency order, according to a new report by HSBC..."The dollar looks awfully like sterling after the First World War," said David Bloom, the bank's currency chief.

dollar supremacy; HSBC bids farewell; Telegraph.