Archive for December, 2008
New Year’s Resolution
Most of us make New Year resolutions. Do you follow through on them? One website lists as its top resolution “Spend more time with family and friends.” That’s a good one, and telling. Our obsession with our careers, money, tasks, errands, American Idol,
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A Life of Lies?
There’s an underlying theme to the fall of Wall Street as we knew it. It is deception, perpetrated in furtherance of self-interest. The Madoff Ponzi scheme is a powerful example of this. Bernie Madoff was living a lie. He knew it. His wife knew it. Many others knew it too including,
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Thinking Global
How are we going to fix big finance? The current thinking is that regulatory measures can do it. But we have regulatory measures in place already. Wall Street is prohibited from defrauding investors, as are mortgage brokers, and other banks. Most conduct that harms the public is already illegal. The
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A House Divided?
Organized labor cheered as President-elect Obama nominated Rep. Hilda Solis for Labor Secretary last week. The consensus seems to be that the Solis pick will be good for labor. She’s a life-long supporter of workers’ rights and backs the pending Employee Free Choice Act, which makes it easier
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Bigger Problems Lurked Behind Deregulatory Measures
On November 12, 1999, President Clinton signed into law the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act, repealing the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 and permitting commercial banks, investment banks and insurance companies to merge, mix and, eventually, melt. At the signing, Senator Phil Gramm
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Back to Basics
People are getting back to basics. I have a friend living in LA who is an avid musician. But to pay the bills he runs a cleaning business. Nothing extravagant, just a simple business. They’re offering a basic service and people are appreciative of the tangible benefits in their lives and
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Indecipherable Exuberance
If a person can’t understand something, the person usually blames it on himself. It’s gotta be my fault. Funny how those things that have desired effects, but that are difficult or impossible to understand, wield such significant control in our lives. We end up deifying them. We deified
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The Bush Backpeddle
When our President (Bush not Bama) announced after the congressional auto bailout failed, that TARP funds might be made available, I suspected it was more about making sure the markets didn’t plunge than reality. I think I was right. Bush is already
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To Churn or not to Churn
Roger Cohen writes a thoughtful column in the NY Times. The problem with all these bailouts is that they are buttressing the status quo. The choice, according to Cohen, is between European-style “life-support” and
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Psycho-Bubble-Babble.
Virginia Postrel writes about the psychology of financial bubbles in this month’s Atlantic Magazine. Why is it that economic bubbles are created? Over and over again? What’s the psychological component? Postrel references
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