Dumb things bloggers say
Alright, I have a mea culpa here. Check out this quote from June 2008: Bank of America’s Ken Lewis is trying to crack a big nut in taking on Countrywide Financial to its balance sheet. To date, BofA has been fairly successful in limiting its writedowns during this credit crisis, but there are any number...
25 Big Corp CEOs Made More Than Their Companies Paid in Federal Taxes
In case you doubted that America needs more progressive taxation, the case in its favor has just been made in a study, "Executive Excess 2011: The Massive CEO Rewards for Tax Dodging," by the Institute of Policy Studies (hat tip readers aet and Vlad via the International Business Times). The report found that the...
An Almost-Open Letter to the CEO and Chairman of the UK’s Financial Services Authority
A letter to the UK's Financial Services Authority, by one of the victims of an apparent massive fraud perpetrated on SME customers of Halifax-Bank of Scotland (HBOS)
The Wages of Destroying Labor Bargaining Power: Nearly 30% of Job Losses Due to Management Cutting Pie in Favor of Capital
Yves here. This short piece by Robert Gordon is important because it seeks to quantify the impact of a phenomenon that economists have noticed a bit late in the game: that the benefits of GDP growth, which used to go mainly to labor (via increased hiring and better wages) now benefit capitalists fare more than...
Dalia Marin on Outsourcing, Income Inequality, CEO Pay
Dalia Marin, who Chair in International Economics at the University of Munich, discusses "new new trade theory" and how it looks at phenomena that don't fit into older models of trade, particularly outsourcing and offshoring. Her work is empirical and here she discusses wage differentials and the various rationales for why CEO pay has...
Clinton Pimps Some More for His Bank and Corporate Benefactors
Of the many low points of the Clinton presidency, one was its questionable money dealings. Remember how Hillary managed to turn $1000 into $100,000 via successful commodities trading? 70% of retail commodities traders lose money. Boy, for a newbie trader, the First Lady was clearly a natural!
A former contact of mine, low profile but...
A Better Way to Make Bankers Pay for Crises?
McKinsey once got a study from a major shipping company whose bottom line was suffering because the managers in its ports were keeping too many containers on hand. No one wanted to be short of containers and delay a shipment, so they all made sure to have enough and then some. Containers are a big...
Goldman Cheats and Wins Again: Gets Special Treatment in UK Tax Abuse Settlement
How does Goldman get away with it again and again? Is it simply bribery? Well, we don't call it bribes in advanced economies, since big fish typically have more complicated and indirect ways of rewarding people who help them out, but it amounts to the same thing. Or do they have the five by seven...
Crowdsourcing Questions for the First Press Conference by a Fed Chairman Tomorrow
Readers may know that tomorrow at 2:30 PM, Ben Bernanke is hosting the first press conference ever held by a Federal Reserve chairman ever. It's remarkable that an official widely described as "the second most powerful person in America" has managed to sidestep basic measures of accountability to the public and transparency like this for...
Your Humble Blogger Asked Larry Summers a Question He Did Not Like
A funny thing happened at the INET conference. First, I got to ask Larry Summers a question because Martin Wolf, who was moderating the session, is a good sport. Normally, at this sort of event, only At Least Semi Big Names get to interact with Big Names. Yours truly is a minimum of a...
