Mbuna

The Recovery Was Too Expensive

Good analysis as always Chris and nice to see you posting here.

Why I Think Paul Krugman Is Wrong

Okay I can see point #2. On point #3 I cannot reconcile it without drawing a line somewhere. The theory makes sense but in reality it will only work up to a point except no one knows where that point actually is. For example if the government buys $100 trillion dollars of toxic assets and uses the printing press, point #3 would be irrelevant. So who knows just how much toxic assets are still out there? What would it take to throw us into hyper-inflation? The scarey part is that we just don't know.

Overall this just seems like trying to buy time and does not solve the problem. And I also think it is doubtful that trying to buy time helps the issue.

From my viewpoint there is far too much cronyism between the Fed, the Treasury, and Wall St. for any good to come of this. Geithner and Summers I think are too beholden to what got us in trouble in the first to be able to have the vision to get us out. They are clearly playing politics first and trying to be effective second. There is ZERO transparency here. As I said in another post- are Geithner and Summers merely unwitting pawns in the entrenched Wall St. feudal system where Goldman Sachs gets a cut of everything and the financial sector is the god that must be eternally bailed out?

Wall St. continues to run the country be default , literally. The AIG bailout (the bonuses were a distraction) stinks to high heaven. If anything Geithner has only added fuel to the idea that Goldman Sachs is continuing to run the Treasury for 3 administrations in a row. Where is the transparency promised?

The Economy on Dope: Investors Fear Inflation, Embrace Gold

Kudos, nice article! I am almost shocked to find someone who generally thinks like I do about this situation. Except I can't imagine this continuing unabated for 10 years- things move much too fast now and I fear the wheels are coming off.

Comparing Value-at-Risk to Crash-and-Burn

The assumption that clear headed thinking can prevail in an asylum full of financial lunatics leaves me wanting. Okay, okay, they're financial deviants not lunatics. Yes, if people paused to think before the feeling of just wanting that little more overtook them it could do some good, But that is certainly NOT the Wall Street of these past few years and at the very least some parental controls are called for and even possibly some electroshock therapy to cure that deviant behavior.

-777.7: Where Do We Go from Here?

"Next, we are working without a net. Washington has no credibility on Wall Street at the moment."
That may be true but ultimately it is beside the point. The point is that Wall Street has no credibility, period. The only way that Washington can change the lack of credibility on Wall Street is to nationalize it. That may bring in another set problems, hehe, but if you want change....
Otherwise the bailout is doomed to failure anyway because too many people are trying to hold on to the Titanic thinking they cannot or simply will not live without it. That is hardly creative thinking. Personally I think we are going to find out what we can live without and it may not be pleasant.

Proposed Regulatory Overhaul: Why are the Foxes Designing the Hen House?

Insanity, well of course, that is norm when you have free market hypocrites (Soros calls them (free) market fundamentalists) masquerading as free market ideologists until everything goes wrong. Then of course their true colors become a little more obvious as you may have noticed. Although someone else here on Alpha came up with this phrase I think it is a great way to frame the current mindset of those that hold the financial reins- "privatize gains, socialize losses". It remains to be seen whether this mantra will hold out till the end of the current administration or whether things will get bad enough that there simply won't be enough smokescreen left to be able to feed it to the public.