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.