Economy

Analyzing official China comments in order to make a currency call is a fool’s errand. However, suffice it to say that all of these comments suggest a reduced patience for the status quo and an increased willingness to recalibrate China FX…

By William K. Black cross-posted from New Economic Perspectives In the Savings and Loan (S&L) debacle Speaker Wright became enraged at the Federal Home Loan Bank Board and the Department of Justice when he learned that the FBI was…

I can no longer say that not a single senior executive of one of the major nonprime lenders whose frauds hyper-inflated the housing bubble and caused the Great Recession has been convicted of his frauds. A single senior executive of one of…

As usual, NMA has a pretty funny animated version of the latest business news. This time it's on the S&P ratings downgrade. Take a look.

From the International Business Times and Andy Lees at UBS: Reports that central China's Hubei province has joined a growing list of regions facing coal shortages with a warning that it is very likely to start power rationing later this…

The key takeaway from the S&P announcement is that the US has been put on notice, but no ratings action are likely until 2013. With no one expecting any serious progress on deficit reduction until after the 2012 election, S&P seems…

Here's the question: Can sovereignty and effective international supervision be reconciled when it comes to complex large financial institutions? Simon Johnson lays out a compelling case that they cannot. As he has said time and again,…

Over the last three decades the US financial sector has grown six times faster than nominal GDP. This column argues that there comes a point when the financial sector has a negative effect on growth – that is, when credit to the private…

Here's a great graph of US income tax rates back to when personal income taxes were started. You can see the marginal rate for personal income has come way down from its 1945 peak. A few months ago, Michael Hudson answered the question,…

Moody's, the rating agency, has cut the credit rating for the Republic of Ireland two notches from Baa1 to Baa3, which is the lowest investment grade rating. They also left the outlook for further rate cuts as negative, meaning that more…