crisis

Citigroup has confirmed it will repay $20 billion of the bailout money it has received from government, becoming the latest big bank to exit the TARP (troubled asset relief program). To prevent capital ratios from dipping, the company will…

The closing of the Bank of the United States could be considered the event during the Great Depression that was most akin for the U.S. to the collapse of Lehman Brothers last year.  The event occurred on 12 December 1930 – so 79 years…

Below are three videos from a talk at the 2009 Economics of Peace Conference in Sonoma, CA, where James Galbraith talks about the Hyman Minsky concept of the instability of stability. This concept is fundamental to the behavioural…

By now you have heard that Dubai World, the investment company, has asked its creditors for a six-month delay in repaying its debt (see articles in links).  This is what is commonly referred to as default. Now many are wondering if…

This is a post I just wrote over at Yves Smith’s site Naked Capitalism in response to a reader request. Marshall Auerback has already written a reply as well and I will post this later today. A reader at Naked Capitalism asked us to…

I have written extensively about how I believe the bank bailouts were the worst of all possible solutions – fixes that perpetuate too big to fail, moral hazard and crony capitalism.  That ship has sailed, but the questions still linger…

Video embedded below. See also Democratic Rep. DeFazio Calls for Geithner and Summers to Be Fired - Yves Smith

Hat tip Rolfe Winkler.

After a huge fall off in credit consistent with the fall in nominal GDP, we are seeing credit stabilise at a lower level. Debt to GDP ratios may not be lower, but as GDP is lower, so too is credit in the system.  Yet there is a large…

A friend sent me the following presentation earlier in the week when I was feeling a bit ill. So I neglected to post it.  But, I want to return to it because it is in keeping with my recovery/depression theme. These are the issues that…