Political Economy

Since everyone seems to be talking about nationalization and pointing to Sweden as a model for the future, one should ask whether Sweden actually nationalized anything. No one is talking about outright Hugo Chavez-style expropriation here.…

The TALF is a way for any and all comers, domestic and foreign, with toxic asset-backed securities, to dump those assets on to the U.S. government at taxpayers expense. This is happening right now right under your noses. At least the Fed…

This comes from Austrian Daily Kurier: A plan to stabilise the economies of Eastern Europe exists. What is missing is a united EU. During and after the Eastern Europe tour by Austrian Vice-Chancellor and Finance Minister Josef Pröll, the…

UPDATE: This is another re-post given the huge bailout just administered to AIG. I am coming out in favor of nationalization in the United States. The efforts to fix the banking system to date have failed. As a result, America is still…

Everybody is talking about nationalization. The latest trigger is the Citi discussions with the U.S. government to convert taxpayers' preferred shares into common equity. Below are a few Bloomberg video clips from just this morning…

Naked Capitalism's Yves Smith was on Fast Money at CNBC yesterday. She made a number of good points regarding the discussion on nationalization. One that particularly resonated with me was her assertion that the United States is…

It is looking like Saab is toast. This comes from Dagens Nyheter, a Swedish daily (note: I originally saw this covered in the Austrian daily Kurier):

Here is yet another post from early last year which presages all of the problems we are seeing today. As I have often written, the fake recovery is just an attempt to paper over these problems. It won't work. Where Ireland, Switzerland,…

This video does not mention Austria by name, focusing instead on Ireland, Spain and Greece, but Austria is more of the problem for the Germans as they are leveraged to Eastern Europe. German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck became the…

In an interview with Swiss daily Tagesanzeiger, a well-known economist has warned that Switzerland risks bankruptcy, if the recent market turmoil centering on Eastern Europe is not contained quickly. At issue are loans made in Swiss Francs…