A while back I criticized the book by a financial correspondent of the New York Times about the financial crisis as gossipy, trashy and not at all informative. Then, in today’s Wall Street Journal, I read an excerpt from Hank Paulson’s new book, On the Brink. There is no doubt: on the evidence of his …
Why did I choose an obscure dispute over the regulation of derivatives to expound on the macro themes of social change and public alienation? The reason is that the dispute goes to the heart of the matter. It is the heart of the matter – the definition of finance, the dialectics inherent in a dispute …
This past year I spent a grim November in Zurich. Grim were the politics; Zurich is a beautiful city and I have dear friends there. The talk of the town was the national referendum to ban the construction of minarets in Switzerland. The anti-minaret poster which itself became the subject of controversy was everywhere. It …
On Sunday, The New York Times had a long article on Sandy Weill. It was the vintage Times P.R. piece, including hyped style to give the story a Homeric or Shakespearean dimension. The man who rose from a humble childhood to build Citi to a powerhouse had it all, got humiliated, now is sad, hurt, …
In developing the characteristics of speculative capital, I wrote in Vol. 1: Speculative capital is, by definition, opportunistic. It is constantly on the lookout for “inefficiencies” across markets which it can arbitrage. The opportunities arise suddenly, so the capital that hopes to exploit them must always be available; it cannot afford to be locked into …
Few people stand up to a close scrutiny. Paul Samuelson, who died on Sunday at the age of 94, fell apart at first glance. The man was a mountebank, a particularly offensive mix of knave and fool whose crowning as “Titan of Economics”, as the Wall Street Journal put it, said volumes about the society …
The news that the U.S. Treasury had “reaped” $936 million from the sale of JPMorgan warrants was everywhere over the weekend. Google “treasury + $936 million” and see for yourself. Credit the U.S. Treasury with the P.R. job. Its announcement said that JPMorgan’s warrants provided “an additional return to the American taxpayer from Treasury’s investment …
According to the New York Times, this is how Prof. Sidney Plotkin of Vassar “dramatizes the pressure a president faces in a falling economy”. Click here to see how. The paper said that Prof. Plotkin shines “a Marxist light” on the economic crisis, though Marx is an “uninvited guest,” the professor was quick to add. …
What should you conclude upon hearing of the financial crisis in Dubai? Perhaps the question is too vague. So let me give a hint: after the collapse of the financial system in the U.S.; after the collapse of the financial system in the U.K.; after the collapse of the financial system in much of the …
Last Friday, William Dudley, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York delivered a long speech on “Lessons From the Crisis” in the Center of Economic Policy Studies Symposium at Princeton University. I don’t suppose you could get any more serious than that in terms of authority and setting, even though the speaker …