Joseph Stiglitz on an easy and cheap fix

Create new banks.


Stiglitz was able to elaborate more on this at Davos, without stupid questions from CNBC talking heads:

http://dailybail.com/home/2009/2/15/bank-bailout-news-video-from-the-world-economic-forum-at-dav.html


Instead, investment banks are allowed to stash billions offshore and have their bad bets covered by the taxpayer. This is so outrageous - looting on a monumental scale.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2009/03/23/big_clawback/

Receivership, now.

http://www.hussmanfunds.com/wmc/wmc090323.htm

Though I believe that the consequences (via credit default swaps and the like) are overstated of letting bondholders take a haircut, and will ultimately be no worse than having the public take the losses, the fact is that we don't even need the bonds of major financial institutions to go into default. What we do need to do is offer those bondholders a choice:

1) The U.S. government takes receivership of the financial institution, changes the management, wipes out the stockholders and a chunk of the bondholders claims entirely, continues the operation of the institution in receivership, eventually reissues the company to private ownership, and leaves the bondholders with the residual. This is not “nationalization,” but receivership – a form of “pre-packaged bankruptcy” that protects the customers and allows the institution to continue to operate, followed by re-privatization. As I've previously noted, this would fully protect all of the customers and depositors at no probable expense to the public. Alternatively;

2) The bondholders voluntarily agree to move a portion of their claims lower down in the capital structure, swapping debt for equity (preferred or common), allowing the bank to have a larger cushion of Tier-1 capital, avoiding insolvency, and hopefully allowing the bank to recover by its own bootstraps, preferably assisted by debt restructuring on the borrower side (via property appreciation rights and the like). Similar debt/equity swaps would be an appropriate strategy toward failing U.S. automakers as well.

Good Bank, not Bad Bank:

http://blogs.ft.com/maverecon/2009/03/dont-touch-the-unsecured-creditors-clobber-the-tax-payer-instead/

And finally, an excellent blogpost pointing out that nationalization is happening now, but of the downside only:

http://www.interfluidity.com/posts/1235210036.shtml

We are all tired of the lies, Mr. Geithner. By all means, let nationalization be a last resort, and do all you can to offer liquidity to private parties willing to take both the upside and downside of speculating in questionable paper. But if you keep nationalizing the downside and privatizing the upside, it will not be very long at all before the public concludes that stress tests and market prices are just a sleight-of-hand for Davos man while he picks our pockets, again. Act fairly, and you may end up nationalizing the worst few of the larger banks. Keep up the games, and we will insist that you nationalize them all. It is getting hard to believe that there is a banker in the land who has not already robbed us. Eventually we will tire of drawing fine distinctions.

Ya think?

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=227162

The bandwagon of authorities has a new seat

Medical Professionals for 9/11 Truth

http://mp911truth.org/

Make that two new seats:

Political Leaders for 9/11 Truth

http://pl911truth.com/

joining these:

Patriots Question 9/11

http://patriotsquestion911.com/

Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth

http://www.ae911truth.org/

Firefighters for 9/11 Truth

http://firefightersfor911truth.org/

Pilots for 9/11 Truth

http://pilotsfor911truth.org/

Lawyers for 9/11 Truth

http://www.l911t.com/

Religious Leaders for 9/11 Truth

http://rl911truth.org/index.php

Coming: Cerebral Cortexed for 9/11 Common Sense

I am happy to see these people speaking out. But please remember, the bandwagon effect and appeals to authority are why so many Americans believed the patently absurd official lies in the first place.

Representative Kanjorski: Dupe or Shill?

In the video linked below, we see Congressman Paul Kanjorski (D-PA, 11th District) on CSPAN, responding to a citizen's criticism of the September 2008 bailout by claiming as follows:

"On Thursday Sept 15, 2008 at roughly 11 AM The Federal Reserve noticed a tremendous draw down of money market accounts in the USA to the tune of $550 Billion dollars in a matter of an hour or two.

Money was being removed electronically.

The treasury tried to help with $150 Billion.

But could not stem the tide.

It was an electronic run on the banks

The treasury intervened but had they not closed down the accounts they estimated that by 2 PM that afternoon. Within 3 hours. $5.5 Trillion would have been withdrawled and collapsed and within 24 hours the world economy."

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=ca2_1234032281


And here we have a strong showing that this was false:

http://www.portfolio.com/views/blogs/market-movers/2009/02/11/kanjorski-and-the-money-market-funds-the-facts

With the Kanjorski Meme still spreading (see Ben Smith, Andrew Leonard, Moldbug, and more), I think I'm finally able to squash it with some hard figures: there never was a $500 billion outflow from any asset class in the space of a couple of hours or even weeks, and the Fed never shut down or froze any money-market accounts.

Icelanders petition their government

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/21/iceland-globalrecession

http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSLL97664

"Protest" is not the right word, because (according to the Guardian article), the petitioners are making "a clear demand for early election."

Video (the international standard: two obligatory young hooligans to discredit the peaceful many)

http://mbl.is/mm/frettir/sjonvarp/22325/

Failure of German bond sale - bad sign

German bond sale’s fate signals trouble ahead

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/16c7ceba-dcbe-11dd-a2a9-000077b07658.html

This is a bad sign, according to Illargi at Automatic Earth:

http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/2009/01/january-7-2009-name-is-bonds-obama.html

Obama warns of a $1 trillion US deficit this year. It’s obvious the deficit will be nearer $2 trillion, but you have to feed it to them bite-size. It'll easily be more than ten times the 2007 deficit of $162 billion, in an economy with a rapidly shrinking GDP. Obama expects the deficit to remain over $1 trillion (read: way over) for many years to come. But in a stark warning to Obama and the US, the Financial Times reports that the first German (10-year) bond issue of the year failed. Yes that's the country with the far more favorable job numbers. There are far less questions about German solvency than there are about the US, and you can bet that Washington pays attention to news like that.

Treasonous intellectuals

From Glenn Greenwald:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/12/24/torture/index.html

Here are Tufts University Political Science Professor Dan Drezner and Stanford Philosophy Professor Joshua Cohen demonstrating how good-hearted, profoundly reasonable, oh-so-intellectually sophisticated Americans diligently struggle with -- torture themselves over -- what they have convinced themselves is the vexing question of whether our leaders should be considered "war criminals" by virtue of . . . . having committed unambiguous war crimes:

Here's a 2004 critique of similar apologies for torture by "human rights expert" Michael Ignatieff:

http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/fascism_and_war/Treason.htm

The moral and intellectual decay of American and Western European intellectuals over the past couple of decades will deserve scrutiny by scholars of future generations. Just as we try to understand what made Martin Heidegger an obedient stooge of the Hitler regime, others will try to figure out what makes a Harvard "liberal" pimp for torture.