Very cool having breakfast with @khanfarw this morning. The things that man knows...
10 minutes ago
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Yes, Virginia, Foreclosure Is Theft
There’s a lot of pushback anytime someone points the finger at banks. As I’ve argued for a couple of years now, virtually all recent foreclosures really amount to theft. The banks have no legal standing to take homes. They created the MERS monster, which destroyed the chain of title and “lost” all the documents. That [...]
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MMT On the Web
In the past few days there have been a number of posts highlighting Modern Money Theory. Here are two at Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/mainstream-economics-and-modern-monetary-theory-a-family-tree/2012/02/17/gIQAiy6RKR_graphic.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/modern-monetary-theory-is-an-unconventional-take-on-economic-strategy/2012/02/15/gIQAR8uPMR_story.html This story set off a number of interesting responses to/defenses of the MMT positions (to be clear, I think almost all the critiques are completely offbase; if you really want to [...]
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LET’S MAKE A DEAL: The Bail-Out of Wall Street in Unusual and Exigent Circumstances
It has been recognized for well over a century that the central bank must intervene as “lender of last resort” in a crisis. In the 1870s Walter Bagehot explained this as a policy of stopping a run on banks by lending without limit, against good collateral, at a penalty interest rate. This would allow the [...]
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State AGs Cave to Banksters
Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism has long been skeptical of the negotiations by the State Attorneys General and the banksters over the foreclosure frauds (see here http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/02/settlement-breakdown-by-state-plus-other-official-propaganda.html). And while I had held out some hope that California and New York would either refuse to join, or would insist on good terms, today’s announcement of the [...]
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WEEKEND ROUNDUP: MORE NEWS FROM THE FRONT
Romney’s “Let Them Eat Cake Moment”: Candidate “Mitt” (? I still cannot get over the name) Romney admitted that he has no interest in anyone who earns less than $20 million a year—he is only concerned with what he called the upper 99%, those like him. He argued that the bottom 1%–the poor—have got more [...]
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$30 TRILLION TO PROMOTE CRONY CAPITALISM: The Fed’s Bail-Out of Wall Street
I’m directing a research project on the Fed’s bail-out of Wall Street and am periodically posting updates on the findings. Previously I’ve blogged the preliminary findings of two of my grad students, James Felkerson and Nicola Matthews and the first paper was finished a few weeks ago (my summary here http://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/op_23.pdf; full paper here http://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/wp_698.pdf) [...]
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OBAMA DISCOVERS FRAUD (and other news from the Front)
Weekend Wrap-up Republican Presidential Debates: At the final debate before the Floridian primary, Newt Gingrich spun his head round and round and upchucked thick pea soup over the moderator and audience. (Has anyone noticed how much Gingrich looks like Chucky the doll? Concidence? I doubt it.) Mitt Romney defended his 14% tax rate, arguing that [...]
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The Fetish for Liquidity (and Reform of the Financial System)
In his General Theory, J.M. Keynes argued that substandard growth, financial instability, and unemployment are caused by the fetish for liquidity. The desire for a liquid position is anti-social because there is no such thing as liquidity in the aggregate. The stock market makes ownership liquid for the individual “investor” but since all the equities [...]
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MORTGAGE FRAUD REVISITED: Why Did the Fed Pump and Dump US Real Estate Markets?
My colleague, Bill Black, has been entertaining himself by reading through the transcripts of the Fed’s meetings to find discussions of mortgage fraud. As you probably know, Congressman Henry Gonzalez forced the Fed to release these transcripts after he caught Chairman Greenspan in a white lie. Well, maybe it was not so white—just an outright [...]
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THE $29 TRILLION BAILOUT OF WALL STREET: Why Should Anyone Care About High Crimes and Misdemeanors?
I previously summarized research that two of my graduate students, James Felkerson and Nicola Matthews, are conducting on the Fed’s bail-out. Using data that the Fed was forced to release, they demonstrated that the cumulative total lent and spent on assets by the Fed was over $29 trillion. (See the first paper here: http://www.levyinstitute.org/publications/?docid=1462) Their [...]
