So Italian bonds have crossed the sustainability line of 7%. Europe has lurched another step closer to the abyss. Our own finance minister is is provisioning the bunker and boarding over the windows to wait out the storm. If this doesn't look like 2008 it surely smells like it.
It appears that the Bank of Canada is getting ready to once again buy sketchy debt from our perhaps not quite so fortress-like banks. Policy initiatives are being postponed. Our deficit hawks have all too belatedly become deficit skeptics.
Stay tuned . . .
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Today's Reading
I have spent today working through two books. The first is Matt Taibbi's wonderfully entertaining Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squibbs and the Long Con that is Breaking America. Taibbi's often raunchy and over the top analysis of the 2008 meltdown trades elegant analysis for a kind of "let's cut the bullshit" honesty. His chapter on Allan Greenspan, "the biggest asshole in the universe" is alone worth the price of admission. There is little new except the raw emotional reality of what really happened. And it is about to happen all over again.
The second is Michael Perino's gripping story of the 1932 Pecora hearings, The Hellhound of Wall Street. More than just a story, however, it is a reminder of how little has changed over the past eighty years. The story of "Sunshine Charlie" Mitchell and National City Bank, of obscene wealth and greed juxtaposed with a flagrant disregard for the consequences visited on innocent victims shows how little has changed and how little we have learned.
Clearly we are headed back into trouble, and it is good to remind ourselves that it was not just institutional failure but truly evil behaviour by those in positions of trust in privilege both eighty years ago and more recently.
The second is Michael Perino's gripping story of the 1932 Pecora hearings, The Hellhound of Wall Street. More than just a story, however, it is a reminder of how little has changed over the past eighty years. The story of "Sunshine Charlie" Mitchell and National City Bank, of obscene wealth and greed juxtaposed with a flagrant disregard for the consequences visited on innocent victims shows how little has changed and how little we have learned.
Clearly we are headed back into trouble, and it is good to remind ourselves that it was not just institutional failure but truly evil behaviour by those in positions of trust in privilege both eighty years ago and more recently.
Time to Return to Writing
After a hiatus of about two and a half years, it is time to start commenting again. Much has happened in that time, but in a sense the world seems to have come full circle, as the financial catastrophe that I was writing about then seems to have returned.
This time, ground zero is not Wall Street but southern Europe. Greece is bankrupt and Italy, with its staggering public debt, now appears to be headed for the abyss. The potential costs are staggering and this time the capacity of state and quasi-state institutions to actually deal with these frightening eventualities is even more in doubt.
But perhaps most worrisome of all is the seeming inability of those in power to even acknowledge the reality that they face. The appearance is one of folly.
This time, ground zero is not Wall Street but southern Europe. Greece is bankrupt and Italy, with its staggering public debt, now appears to be headed for the abyss. The potential costs are staggering and this time the capacity of state and quasi-state institutions to actually deal with these frightening eventualities is even more in doubt.
But perhaps most worrisome of all is the seeming inability of those in power to even acknowledge the reality that they face. The appearance is one of folly.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
