3/23/09

Another Beast column

This one on Ben Bernanke's latest moves.

3/19/09

Wall Street Ethics In Brief

From The Big Picture, one of my favorites blogs:

When a fireman sees a house on fire, he sounds an alarm, dons his turnout gear, bravely rescues the occupants and puts out the fire.

When an investment banker sees a house on fire, he quietly sells the burning house short, uses the proceeds to buy a larger house for himself and, when someone suggests that his taxes be raised to help the homeless, he rails against the dangers of socialism.

3/17/09

Give The Bonuses Back --Or Else

I have a new piece up on The Daily Beast today on the AIG bonuses.

3/12/09

Obama's No Socialist

I have new piece in The Daily Beast today on why top earners should relax because Obama's new tax plan still subsidizes them very generously.

3/7/09

The AIG Black Hole

Barry Ritholtz lays out the awful truth about how the AIG bailout is really just bailing out the brand name Wall Street firms who made bad derivative bets. That's where much of our $170 billion or so has gone. In the name of "preventing systemic risk." Maybe there will be a revolution once people really understand what's happened...

Forbidden Environmental Fruit

Interesting piece in Foreign Affairs about geoengineering, the idea that we might try to directly re-engineer stuff in the atmosphere to address climate change if we can't get our global act together to reduce carbon emissions in the decades ahead. This has generally been considered fringe stuff with real sci-fi overtones (as well as something no one wants to talk about because if pols think this can really work they'll skip the hard work of actually cutting emissions). So FA's publication of a serious piece making the case for examining this option more fully marks a new moment in the evolving debate methinks. Worth a look.

Lerach's Letter From Prison

Have another piece in the Daily Beast based on an idea from Jody that I blogged about here, about siccing Bill Lerach on the banks to get back their ill-gotten bonuses. Lerach himself replied with a long letter from prison on how the feds can do it, which you can read at the Beast. Here's hoping the authorities follow up....

3/1/09

The Failure of Economics

Mark Thoma has great post on new paper about the systemic failure of economics as a field in not helping us avoid today's crisis or having enough relevant things to say about our most pressing problems.