Monetary System

In a clear break with US economic policy, the UK government have decided that too big to fail is too big to exist. As a result, three large financial institutions now owned at least in part by government are to be dismantled. Moreover, talk…

CIT has the approval of debtholders to file a prepackaged bankruptcy. This comes via Business Wire: CIT Group Inc. (NYSE: CIT), a leading provider of financing to small businesses and middle market companies, today announced that, with…

And you thought the bailouts were over and market discipline might be restored.  Not a chance – the bailouts will continue, come hell or high water. The latest demonstration of this is GMAC, where the government will now be majority…

This is a post I wrote in response to an ongoing debate about financial crises, credit revulsion and deficit spending over at Naked Capitallism. See the four links in the first paragraph for the precursor articles. DoctoRx, Rob Parenteau…

This comes via the NYTimes: To the Editor: Re “Volcker’s Voice, Often Heeded, Fails to Sell a Bank Strategy” (front page, Oct. 21): As another older banker and one who has experienced both the pre- and post-Glass-Steagall world, I…

Steve Horwitz had an interesting read last week on Friedrich von Hayek, the Nobel Prize winning Austrian School economist. Von Hayek is best known for his 1944 Libertarian call to arms “Road to Serfdom” and is generally considered one of…

This morning, I ran across a post by Prieur du Plessis, which linked out to a Stephen Roach interview on Charlie Rose. Roach is the head of Morgan Stanley Asia and has been a voice to listen to when trying to discern where China is headed…

Marshall Auerback here with a few thoughts on money, the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet, and the alphabet soup of emergency liquidity facilities. The expansion of the Fed’s balance sheet has been widely misunderstood within the economics…

It seems that not a day goes by when you don’t hear about some asset sale in Citigroup’s far-flung empire. Of all the major too-big-to-fail institutions, it is easily the most troubled: the poster child for everything that is wrong in…

In the months since I began this website, I have had some fairly harsh things to say about economic policy in the U.S., the U.K. and elsewhere. I have consistently condemned what I think is a captured government promoting an unstable…