Comments on: Credit Crises

By: earlofhuntingdon

earlofhuntingdon — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 15:45:31 +0000

Everybody’s the same size when they’re flat on their back on the floor of a pub. Imagine, Guinness and Harp less than twenty-four hours old. Almost enough to make it worth the cost of rent in Dublin. EW could give literarily guided tours to all the places Joyce never went, or write the Celtic version of Down and Out in Paris and “Dublin”.

By: earlofhuntingdon

earlofhuntingdon — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 15:39:11 +0000

Happy St. Patty’s Day, too. Pity the Welsh won the Six Nations tournament and that the English came in second. A move to Ireland would be expensive, especially to Dublin, but it has some of the best telecoms infrastructure on the planet. You shouldn’t have to miss a day’s blogging with the faithful. Enjoy the green beer; I hear that not all the Irish are in South Bend.

By: Dakinikat

Dakinikat — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 15:36:57 +0000

ireland has a great economy … the rank higher than the US on just about every good measure but Size … so as along as size doesn’t matter …

By: earlofhuntingdon

earlofhuntingdon — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 15:36:03 +0000

I prefer a more rational solution, like the one the Brits just used when taking over a failed bank: Top management – out; you got us into this mess. Shareholders – Nothin’; taxpayers aren’t going to insure you against standard equity risks. Taxpayer money goes, instead, to helping reorganize the critter under new management, or get someone else to buy it while providing the target temporary liquidity outside of the normal, but lengthier and more expensive, bankruptcy process.

The aim should be to help limit market excesses, including knock-on failures of other banks, and to allocate the losses most fairly, not to subsidize wealthy managers against the risks of their own screw ups. Only the community of true believers in corporatefare do that.

By: Dakinikat

Dakinikat — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 15:35:55 +0000

CEOs and senior management of firms generally don’t get the jobs based on their credentials, but the perception of competenence, their chums, and their alpha maleness… i can’t tell you how many idiot CEOS I’ve consulted with … they’re just good suits, good hair, and smile and the ability to know who to stab in the back

By: Dakinikat

Dakinikat — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 15:33:30 +0000

Yeah, I’ve been trying to unravel the credit derivatives market for about a year now. It’s suddenly become a hot topic in research ciricles now, so i’m trying to hurry and get it published before the big guys chomp into it with their army of GAs.

By: PJEvans

PJEvans — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 14:51:41 +0000

I was thinking what the Fed should have done was to tell the management at Bear Stearns – everyone who was making decisions and getting bonuses based on those heavily-leveraged investments – that they could keep a million a year of everything they’d been paid the last, say, five years, but everything over that was going into the bail-out kitty. And they were going to be permanently out of the banking/securities/financial industry after the bailout, permanently, because of what they’d done.

(That last could also apply to a lot of people at the Fed, and elsewehre in government.)

By: Jkat

Jkat — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 14:19:17 +0000

Total value of world’s stock and bond markets is more than $100 trillion

okay ..but we just witnessed a company with a supposed 335bb asset pool get purchased for a total of 30.275 bb .. not even 10 cents on the dollar

what do you think those 100t worth of “stocks” will get ya if everybody tried to sell them in the same week ??

By: Rayne

Rayne — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 14:18:09 +0000

Happy St. Paddy’s Day to you and mr. emptywheel, too.

Yes, he’s not aware about Ireland’s connection to the financial industry in particular. During the fat and happy ’90’s, many companies opened financial subsidiaries in Ireland which had changed their laws to encourage foreign investment so as to become the new Bermuda. I worked extensively on setting up a captive insurance subsidiary there, in which a Fortune 100 company was going to bundle some of its financial exposures. Perhaps laws have changed since then, but they were awfully willing to take American money then, I don’t think that changed.

And then there’s the bit about Ireland being key to rendition flights…

By: emptywheel

emptywheel — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 13:41:16 +0000

To celebrate the ~~recession~~ Depression, mr. emptywheel is beginning to talk about moving home (for him) to Ireland.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day, where even Ireland has a better economy than the US (though I don’t think mr. emptywheel has thought about how closely chained Ireland’s tiger is to the American trainer).