Fri 2010-09-17 19:26 EDT

Memo to Obama: time to break the refinance strike by the big banks

Christopher Whalen

...The Obama Administration and the Fed have taken the position that the crisis affecting the U.S. economy and the financial sector is slowly ending. In fact, the largest banks remain profoundly troubled by bad assets on their books as well as claims against these same banks for assets sold to investors. By allowing banks to ``muddle along'' and heal these wounds using low interest rates provided by the Fed, the Obama Administration is embracing a policy of deflation that has horrible consequences for U.S. workers and households...the Obama Administration has been providing political cover for the Fed to conduct a massive, reverse Robin Hood scheme, moving trillions of dollars in resources from savers and consumers to the big banks and their share and bond holders...the Obama Administration should use the power provided in the Dodd-Frank legislation to force an accelerated cleanup of bad assets and to mandate refinancing and principal reductions for performing loans with viable borrowers...President Obama also needs to focus on the growing competitive problem in the U.S. mortgage sector...now dominated by a cozy oligopoly of Too Big To Fail banks (TBTF)...Why is there no antitrust investigation of the top banks by the Department of Justice?...

big banks; break; memo; Obama; refinance strike; Time.

Fri 2010-03-19 20:42 EDT

Breaking the chain: The antitrust case against Wal-Mart

Barry C. Lynn (Harper's Magazine, July 2006)

...It is now twenty-five years since the Reagan Administration eviscerated America's century-long tradition of antitrust enforcement. For a generation, big firms have enjoyed almost complete license to use brute economic force to grow only bigger. And so today we find ourselves in a world dominated by immense global oligopolies that every day further limit the flexibility of our economy and our personal freedom within it...what should concern us today even more is a mirror image of monopoly called ``monopsony.'' Monopsony arises when a firm captures the ability to dictate price to its suppliers, because the suppliers have no real choice other than to deal with that buyer. Not all oligopolists rely on the exercise of monopsony, but a large and growing contingent of today's largest firms are built to do just that...today we have one of the best illustrations of monopsony pricing power in economic history: Wal-Mart...Wal-Mart has grown so powerful that it can turn even its largest suppliers, and entire oligopolized industries, into extensions of itself...the firm is also one of the world's most intrusive, jealous, fastidious micromanagers, and its aim is nothing less than to remake entirely how its suppliers do business, not least so that it can shift many of its own costs of doing business onto them. In addition to dictating what price its suppliers must accept, Wal-Mart also dictates how they package their products, how they ship those products, and how they gather and process information on the movement of those products...Rather than speed up the random motion and serendipitous collisions that have for so long propelled the American economy, Wal-Mart and other monopsonists are slowly freezing our economy into an ever more rigid crystal that holds each of us ever more tightly in place, and that every day is more liable to collapse from some sudden shock. To defend Wal-Mart for its low prices is to claim that the most perfect form of economic organization more closely resembles the Soviet Union in 1950 than twentieth-century America...

Antitrust case; break; chain; Wal-Mart.

Jesse's Café Américain Thu 2009-08-20 16:16 EDT

China Makes Biggest Cut in US Treasury Assets Since 2000

Jesse

One has to wonder how long the UK, Japan and the US can keep supporting each other's crony capitalist oligopolies. China DailyChina cuts US Treasury holdings in June2009-08-18NEW YORK: China reduced its holdings of US Treasury debt in June by the biggest margin in nearly nine years, according to a US Treasury Department report issued on Monday.China cut its net holdings by 3.1 percent to $776.4

2000; China Makes Biggest Cut; Jesse's Café Américain; treasury assets.

Jesse's Café Américain Thu 2009-08-20 16:11 EDT

China Makes Biggest Cut in US Treasury Assets Since 2000

Jesse

One has to wonder how long the UK, Japan and the US can keep supporting each other's crony capitalist oligopolies. China DailyChina cuts US Treasury holdings in June2009-08-18NEW YORK: China reduced its holdings of US Treasury debt in June by the biggest margin in nearly nine years, according to a US Treasury Department report issued on Monday.China cut its net holdings by 3.1 percent to $776.4

2000; China Makes Biggest Cut; Jesse's Café Américain; treasury assets.

Jesse's Café Américain Thu 2009-08-20 16:11 EDT

China Makes Biggest Cut in US Treasury Assets Since 2000

Jesse

One has to wonder how long the UK, Japan and the US can keep supporting each other's crony capitalist oligopolies. China DailyChina cuts US Treasury holdings in June2009-08-18NEW YORK: China reduced its holdings of US Treasury debt in June by the biggest margin in nearly nine years, according to a US Treasury Department report issued on Monday.China cut its net holdings by 3.1 percent to $776.4

2000; China Makes Biggest Cut; Jesse's Café Américain; treasury assets.

Jesse's Café Américain Thu 2009-08-20 16:07 EDT

China Makes Biggest Cut in US Treasury Assets Since 2000

Jesse

One has to wonder how long the UK, Japan and the US can keep supporting each other's crony capitalist oligopolies. China DailyChina cuts US Treasury holdings in June2009-08-18NEW YORK: China reduced its holdings of US Treasury debt in June by the biggest margin in nearly nine years, according to a US Treasury Department report issued on Monday.China cut its net holdings by 3.1 percent to $776.4

2000; China Makes Biggest Cut; Jesse's Café Américain; treasury assets.

Fri 2008-12-12 00:00 EST

Jesse's Café Américain: Money Supply, Paul Krugman, and the Great Depression

Jesse's Café Américain: Money Supply, Paul Krugman, and the Great Depression; ``Fed made a significant policy error in raising the discount rate in early 1931''; ``we can imagine an outcome in which misbegotten monetary policy results in an oligopoly of corporate interests and an economy that is permanently frozen in a series of de facto monopolies based on central planning, not all that dissimilar to the experience of the Soviet Union prior to its dissolution and some countries in which a hundred or so powerful families control the government and its economy in a state of permanent corruption and malaise.''

Great Depression; Jesse's Café Américain; money supply; Paul Krugman.