From the category archives:

Central Banks

Outrage of the Week: Paulson and Bernanke Flunk the Confidence Test

November 14, 2008

In a time when the restoration of confidence, perhaps more than even financial liquidity, is paramount in calming markets and providing stability, neither the Treasury secretary nor the chairman of the Fed acquitted themselves well this week. As the war in Iraq unfolded, and then morphed into disaster in its first several years, the world discovered the [...]

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October of the Fleeting Trillions

October 31, 2008

The magnitude of the financial injury worldwide and the costs to repair it are breathtaking.  But the loss of faith occasioned by what so many see as a colossal betrayal on the part of leaders and institutions may prove the most damaging of all. The tenth month in the Gregorian calendar will go into history [...]

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The Greenspan Myth and Other Hazards When Men are Called Gods

October 24, 2008

The once powerful and still influential former Fed chairman took no lessons at all from the carnage of Enron and other scandals that occurred on his watch, where boards had shown themselves to be utterly incapable of monitoring the ethical and financial health of company after company, and management’s approach to risk was the financial equivalent of [...]

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Outrage of the Week: Ingratitude, Thy Name is Wall Street

October 5, 2008

How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child! –King Lear. When the U.S. House of Representatives rejected the $700 billion Wall Street bailout last week, stock markets promptly plunged. Advocates of the plan were quick to blame opponents for the record drop in the Dow. Dire warnings were issued that [...]

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Would a Sensible Investor Buy into the Bush Bailout Plan?

September 26, 2008

Making bad investment decisions over risky products that people did not fully understand is what brought the United States and Wall Street to the brink. Is another terrible folly about to be repeated, even with echoes of the costs and misadventures of the Iraq war booming loudly across the land? Investors generally like a few details before [...]

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Outrage of the Week: The Hijacking of American Capitalism

September 20, 2008

The promise of this new era of market miracles has been shamefully betrayed by a self-serving collection of greedy CEOs, disengaged directors and regulators who, far from envisioning the new frontier of the global economy, have shown themselves unable to see even into the next week. It was advertised as a sure path to wealth [...]

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AIG Bailout: And Taxpayers Didn’t Get a Guarantee for their $85 Billion?

September 18, 2008

It is bad enough that an insurance company, which should know a thing or two about risk, was so badly run that it needed to have the U.S. government nationalize it to the tune of an $85 billion purchase.  But when the White House admits that taxpayers may not even see their money returned, you [...]

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The Government from Simbirsk*

September 17, 2008

Without a shot being fired or a ballot being cast, the United States government has been overtaken by an act of socialism on a scale that is as incomprehensible as it is shocking.   Now, in addition to being the world’s largest mortgage backer as a result of its takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, [...]

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What the Fed Could Learn From a Jar of Jif Peanut Butter

May 15, 2008

We have cast a skeptical eye in recent months on the Fed’s response to the subprime meltdown, and its handling of the Bear Stearns bailout. In The Wall Street Journal today, Greg Ip writes: (subscription required) Since the credit crisis began last August, the Fed has expanded the volume and types of loans it is [...]

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