And I don’t mean high school algebra. Here’s an article from the excellent writer Felix Salmon over at Wired Magazine on the mathematical formula that has ruined your economic world. Maybe you’ve been hearing people talking about problems caused by “financial innovation” or “financial engineering” or “risk models.” Salmon’s article explains what that all really […]
Speaking of Baseline Scenario (in my last post), here’s an interesting piece on the market for ceo compensation. It’s all in the relationships, baby.
If you’re interested in the raw political power of the financial services industry and its impact on the various banking bailouts (and really, who isn’t these days?), you have to follow the blog The Baseline Scenario. Check out this post about our American oligarchs. One of the Baseline Scenario bloggers also appeared on Bill Moyers […]
In addition to everything else we need to do to fix our economic problems, we need an ethical overhaul.
TheStreet.com has an interactive map of banks that the FDIC has shut down. Three are in Illinois, but they all seem small to me. Two are downstate.
A hat tip to Casey of my prior Drinking Liberally group: How the Economy Was Lost There’s a lot in here. I don’t agree with everything, but the basic thrust is right. I have two points: He puts “free trade” in quotes throughout the piece. But he doesn’t seem to spell out how, by his […]
I’ve mentioned before that, for the last couple of months, I’ve spent the time I would have spent on blogging instead getting my head wrapped around the economic crisis. During that time, I’ve put together some summary documents just to help my thinking. Here’s one of those summaries listing the reasons for the economic crisis. […]
1. Indifference to human suffering a. Conservatives are indifferent, which takes two forms: The soft version – Life is unfair. Get over it. The hard version – If people are suffering, it’s their own damn fault. b. Liberals are not indifferent to human suffering Yes, life is unfair. That’s why we should do something to […]
If I were to look for any kind of bright spot to come out of the recent economic turmoil, it would be that just about every economic assumption of the past century has been questioned, debated, and defended in just the last few months. It’s been quite something to read and watch libertarians all the […]
So David Brooks puts our recent economic history this way: A few years ago, the global economic culture began swaying. The government enabled people to buy homes they couldn’t afford. The Fed provided easy money. The Chinese sloshed in oceans of capital. The giddy upward sway produced a crushing ride down. Basically it’s the standard […]
Bill Poorman 