Last Resort Lending

Lots of big bank whining today as the Fed turns over the names of the banks that borrowed from its discount window during our last financial crisis.  The Fed fought tooth and nail to keep the names secret under the theory that disclosing them would somehow cause the markets to punish the banks because they'd basically be viewed as insolvent.  Which, actually, a large number of them were during the crisis.  Bloomberg has the story.

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon vows that his firm won't ever borrow from the Discount Window again because of this disclosure stigmata, and generally bankers have been whining and gnashing their teeth over this ruffling of their secrecy.  To which I say, talk to me when you're actually facing the choice of either having your company go under or borrowing from the Discount Window.  I'll put money down that you'll be borrowing from that window.  Talk is cheap when you're not facing any risk.  And given the amount of money that the taxpayers had to funnel and/or guarantee to the big banks, they should just shut up on this point.

Fukushima, Market Failure, and Our Robot Overlords

One question comes to mind when contemplating the Fukushima meltdowns:  Where are the robots?  And I'm not alone in asking this obvious question.  It's a no-brainer to send in robots to a situation like this that fries humans.  But apparently, the Japanese, masters of automated production, don't have any that can deal with this crisis.  Nor has the vaunted free market produced any, probably because nuclear meltdowns only seem to happen once every couple of decades or so.  This is a fairly clear example where the government should have stepped in where the market hasn't and built robots to handle a disaster like this, as apparently the French and the Germans have.  Anyhow, for those of you concerned about being taken over by robot overlords anytime soon, the Fukushima disaster is clear evidence that robots are nowhere near being able to take over.  The best that the robots can do for us right now is take pictures, which although helpful does not stop the bleeding.

QE2

I don't see how Bernanke and Geithner can keep a straight face when they argue that the Fed's quantitative easing (QE2) isn't being intentionally done to devalue the dollar.  That's a bit too cute for me.  Intentional or not, that's the effect it's going to have, and it's not credible for either of them to say that they weren't aware that a devaluation would occur and that it's just being done to boost growth.  Printing $600 billion dollars is going to devalue the U.S. dollar.  As a fuck you to China for being so intransigent on its managed devaluation of its currency  I do rather enjoy QE2.  Now both the U.S. and China are effectively devaluing their currencies while at the same time pretending not to.  And this is also a bit of a fuck you to Germany, whose austerity minded politicians and bankers are horrified by QE2. 

An Abomination

I'm pretty jaded at my age, but Glenn Beck stating he's going to reclaim the civil rights movement on the Lincoln Memorial on the anniversary of Martin Luther King's famous "I have a dream speech" blows my mind.  Beck believes the civil rights movement has become "an abomination."  I almost vomited in my morning coffee when I read that whopper.  A delusional, divisive, white Mormon is going to redeem the civil rights movement?  How, by claiming it for white people?  The man's stupidity is only outdone by his audacity.  How many black people do you think you'll see at his rally?

High on Hayek

Too many conservatives confuse Hayek's insight that the government can never have enough information to properly fix prices with the proposition that the government can never successfully intervene in the economy.  The latter proposition simply isn't true.  There are many reasons to be wary of government intervention, but it is not a given that such intervention is bad.

Failure's Success

The Economist grudgingly admits in its latest issue that Obama's government takeover of GM worked.  The allegedly nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reports that Obama's stimulus package saved jobs and prevented the economy from contracting.  Yet ideologically straight jacketed conservatives, who offer no economic prescriptions except the exact same ones that got us into this mess, oppose any new form of stimulus or government intervention in the economy.  The economic indicators of late, which reflect the fact that Obama's stimulus is wearing out, do not bode well for the U.S. economy.  Yet any hope of a new stimulus bill, or any creative solution to this crisis, does not exist.  All we get are the same tired mantras from the opposition about cutting taxes, deficits, and the role of government.  The exact same rigid ideologies we were battered with as we careened into this current crash.    

Hallowed Bullshit

Just who consecrated Ground Zero?  What do you really mean when you say it's hallowed, sacred ground?  Aren't you just really saying it's an exclusive Christian cemetery and everyone else can go fuck themselves?  How can a concept like hallowed sacred ground even be intelligible without the prism of religion?  How can you argue with a straight face that this really isn't about religion but is about sensitivity to sacred ground?  The hallowed and the sacred are meaningless outside the religious context.