Qantas’ Pilots vs. Wall Street’sHere’s a thought, apropos of (almost) nothing: The cure to our economic woes has nothing to do with finding exactly the right monetary policy, or getting the Chinese to price the Yuan “fairly,” or bridging today’s yawning political chasms to reach necessary compromises. The first step is to seriously and completely...Read More
Laws, Sausages — & Securitized Mortgages Laws are like sausages ” it is best not to see them being made. –Otto Von Bismarck To “laws” and “sausages,” now add “securitized debt,” circa 2004-2008. It turns out that Wall Street’s financial sausage factory was even more toxic and laxly run than previously thought. The latest chapter...Read More
The Necessity of Choosing Sides The guerilla wins if he does not lose. The conventional army loses if it does not win. –Henry Kissinger What does Kissinger’s famous maxim about guerilla warfare have to do with Barack Obama and Wall Street? That in every great engagement, there are always two battles being waged: the real...Read More
See . . This . . Movie Calling Charles Ferguson’s “Inside Job” a documentary is like calling The Gettysburg Address a speech. Bar none, it is the clearest, most succinct explanation of the Wall Street-engineered financial crash — whose aftermath we are still very much dealing with — that I have seen. More than a...Read More
“But isn’t that . . . ‘Socialism’??” He who frames the question wins the debate. I’ve been struck in recent months, talking to various people about the economy, by two things: One. The generally limited vocabulary people have when it comes to understanding all things financial — even people who are otherwise very sophisticated, well-educated,...Read More
Engineers, Financial & Otherwise OK, so I’m not coming down on the side of buying more Intel stock (vs. selling what I did buy, way back in 1995; see, “To Buy Intel (or not) . . . that is the question“). But I still like what Intel does a whole lot better than what Wall...Read More
