I do not think [financiers] can be blamed for [the financial melt-down] any more than one can blame a lion for eating a zebra. Capitalism is Darwinian. –Judge Richard Posner, “A Failure of Capitalism: The Crisis of ’08 and the Descent into Depression” Personally, I think Posner lets Wall Street off the hook a little...Read More
Local Exec Cashes In While Company Crashes If you’re disgusted by financial executives hauling in tens of millions while their companies crash and burn, it might be consoling to think the phenomenon is limited to Wall Street. Unfortunately, it’s not. As the Star Trib reported yesterday, the former CEO of MoneyGram, Philip Milne, received a...Read More
“Houston, We Have a (Political) Problem”One of the very best pieces I’ve read — out of perhaps thousands now — analyzing the ongoing financial melt-down is “The Quiet Coup,” by Simon Johnson. The article appears in the May issue of The Atlantic magazine. Johnson, a former chief economist of The International Monetary Fund, has a...Read More
Can We Afford Wall Street?I’ve got a way to make palatable the $3 trillion (or is it $4 trillion? Or $6 trillion?) injected into Wall Street (so far). Don’t think of it as a bailout, think of it as alimony. Yes, alimony. As in, what you pay to divorce someone — or in Wall Street’s...Read More
Financial Res Ipsa Loquiter – Part 2 [Note: please return to this post after reading Part 1] Even people who agree that holding Wall Street accountable is a laudable goal are likely to raise four objections. The most serious arguments — and the rebuttals — are: One. “No laws were broken.” Specifically, the SEC allowed...Read More
Financial Res Ipsa LoquiterIf the stock market surged 15% in the week since Bernie Madoff finally went to prison, just imagine what it would do once the senior management at companies like AIG, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and Fannie Mae are held accountable for their behavior. And why shouldn’t they be? Thanks to the legal principle...Read More
