Economics Debunked: Chapter Two for Sixth Graders

Ethical MarketsReforming Global Finance

 

Economics Debunked: Chapter Two for Sixth Graders

Posted: 22 Sep 2011 01:35 AM PDT

Readers gave high marks to Andrew Dittmer’s summary of a dense but very important paper by Claudio Borio and Piti Disyatat of the BIS and asked if he could produce more of the same.

While Andrew, a recent PhD in mathematics, has assigned himself some truly unpleasant tasks, like reading every bank lobbying document he could get his hands on to see what their defenses of their privileged role amounted to, he has yet to produce any output from these endeavors that are ready for public consumption.

 

 

Banking Updates: More 50 State Settlement Follies; Moody’s Downgrade of Bank of America

Posted: 22 Sep 2011 12:30 AM PDT

I don’t mean to sound as if I am hectoring Shahien Nasiripour, since he has doggedly and successfully broken quite a few banking stories when he was at Huffington Post, which lead the Financial Times to snatch him up. That’s tremendous validation for a young reporter.

 

Randy Wray: The Biggest Bubble of All Time – Commodities Market Speculation

Posted: 21 Sep 2011 10:23 PM PDT

By L. Randall Wray, a Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and Senior Scholar at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. Cross posted from EconoMonitor

Sorry, this is a day late (but hopefully not a dollar short).

Back in fall of 2008 I wrote a piece examining what was then the biggest bubble in human history:http://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/ppb_96.pdf.

Say what? You thought that was tulip bulb mania? Or, maybe the NASDAQ hi-tech hysteria?

 

 

The Fed Twists in the Breeze

Posted: 21 Sep 2011 12:43 PM PDT

Mr. Market so far is not at all impressed with the announcement today that the Fed will be changing the composition of its portfolio by selling $400 billion of near-dated Treasuries and buying the same amount of longer maturity Treasuries. Since the Fed will maintain the same Fed funds target rate, the Fed’s intent is to keep short term rates low and also reduce longer term rates.