[Zanimivost] negativne obrestne mere?

tole idejo sem že nekajkrat videl omenjeno... sicer ni bila nikoli praktično uporabljena na pravem gospodarstvu, je bila pa uspešna v nekih majhnih rudarskih mestih, kjer so uporabljali lasten denar: bankovce, sestavljene iz kuponov, ki so zapadli (izgubili vrednost) na določen datum.

ampak tole so izredni časi... (in Greg Mankiw je resen ekonomist in profesor na Harvardu)
Economic View

It May Be Time for the Fed to Go Negative

Published: April 18, 2009

WITH unemployment rising and the financial system in shambles, it’s hard not to feel negative about the economy right now. The answer to our problems, however, could well be more negativity. But I’m not talking about attitude. I‘m talking about numbers.

David G. Klein

Let’s start with the basics: What is the best way for an economy to escape a recession?

Until recently, most economists relied on monetary policy. Recessions result from an insufficient demand for goods and services — and so, the thinking goes, our central bank can remedy this deficiency by cutting interest rates. Lower interest rates encourage households and businesses to borrow and spend. More spending means more demand for goods and services, which leads to greater employment for workers to meet that demand.

The problem today, it seems, is that the Federal Reserve has done just about as much interest rate cutting as it can. Its target for the federal funds rate is about zero, so it has turned to other tools, such as buying longer-term debt securities, to get the economy going again. But the efficacy of those tools is uncertain, and there are risks associated with them.

In many ways today, the Fed is in uncharted waters.

So why shouldn’t the Fed just keep cutting interest rates? Why not lower the target interest rate to, say, negative 3 percent?

At that interest rate, you could borrow and spend $100 and repay $97 next year. This opportunity would surely generate more borrowing and aggregate demand.

The problem with negative interest rates, however, is quickly apparent: nobody would lend on those terms. Rather than giving your money to a borrower who promises a negative return, it would be better to stick the cash in your mattress. Because holding money promises a return of exactly zero, lenders cannot offer less.

Unless, that is, we figure out a way to make holding money less attractive.

At one of my recent Harvard seminars, a graduate student proposed a clever scheme to do exactly that. (I will let the student remain anonymous. In case he ever wants to pursue a career as a central banker, having his name associated with this idea probably won’t help.)

Imagine that the Fed were to announce that, a year from today, it would pick a digit from zero to 9 out of a hat. All currency with a serial number ending in that digit would no longer be legal tender. Suddenly, the expected return to holding currency would become negative 10 percent.

That move would free the Fed to cut interest rates below zero. People would be delighted to lend money at negative 3 percent, since losing 3 percent is better than losing 10.

Of course, some people might decide that at those rates, they would rather spend the money — for example, by buying a new car. But because expanding aggregate demand is precisely the goal of the interest rate cut, such an incentive isn’t a flaw — it’s a benefit.

The idea of making money earn a negative return is not entirely new. In the late 19th century, the German economist Silvio Gesell argued for a tax on holding money. He was concerned that during times of financial stress, people hoard money rather than lend it. John Maynard Keynes approvingly cited the idea of a carrying tax on money. With banks now holding substantial excess reserves, Gesell’s concern about cash hoarding suddenly seems very modern.

If all of this seems too outlandish, there is a more prosaic way of obtaining negative interest rates: through inflation. Suppose that, looking ahead, the Fed commits itself to producing significant inflation. In this case, while nominal interest rates could remain at zero, real interest rates — interest rates measured in purchasing power — could become negative. If people were confident that they could repay their zero-interest loans in devalued dollars, they would have significant incentive to borrow and spend.

Having the central bank embrace inflation would shock economists and Fed watchers who view price stability as the foremost goal of monetary policy. But there are worse things than inflation. And guess what? We have them today. A little more inflation might be preferable to rising unemployment or a series of fiscal measures that pile on debt bequeathed to future generations.

Ben S. Bernanke, the Fed chairman, is the perfect person to make this commitment to higher inflation. Mr. Bernanke has long been an advocate of inflation targeting. In the past, advocates of inflation targeting have stressed the need to keep inflation from getting out of hand. But in the current environment, the goal could be to produce enough inflation to ensure that the real interest rate is sufficiently negative.

The idea of negative interest rates may strike some people as absurd, the concoction of some impractical theorist. Perhaps it is. But remember this: Early mathematicians thought that the idea of negative numbers was absurd. Today, these numbers are commonplace. Even children can be taught that some problems (such as 2x + 6 = 0) have no solution unless you are ready to invoke negative numbers.

Maybe some economic problems require the same trick.

N. Gregory Mankiw is a professor of economics at Harvard. He was an adviser to President George W. Bush.

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To elektronsko sporocilo in vse morebitne priloge so poslovna skrivnost in namenjene izkljucno naslovniku. Ce ste sporocilo prejeli pomotoma, Vas prosimo, da obvestite posiljatelja, sporocilo pa takoj unicite. Kakrsnokoli razkritje, distribucija ali kopiranje vsebine sporocila je izrecno prepovedano. Ni nujno, da to sporocilo odraza uradno stalisce druzbe.

Elektronsko sporocilo je pregledano z antivirusnim programom.

 

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[Mnenja] Krugman: Green Shoots and Glimmers

še ena dobra od Krugmana:

Green Shoots and Glimmers

Published: April 16, 2009

Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, sees “green shoots.” President Obama sees “glimmers of hope.” And the stock market has been on a tear.

So is it time to sound the all clear? Here are four reasons to be cautious about the economic outlook.

1. Things are still getting worse. Industrial production just hit a 10-year low. Housing starts remain incredibly weak. Foreclosures, which dipped as mortgage companies waited for details of the Obama administration’s housing plans, are surging again.

The most you can say is that there are scattered signs that things are getting worse more slowly — that the economy isn’t plunging quite as fast as it was. And I do mean scattered: the latest edition of the Beige Book, the Fed’s periodic survey of business conditions, reports that “five of the twelve Districts noted a moderation in the pace of decline.” Whoopee.

2. Some of the good news isn’t convincing. The biggest positive news in recent days has come from banks, which have been announcing surprisingly good earnings. But some of those earnings reports look a little ... funny.

Wells Fargo, for example, announced its best quarterly earnings ever. But a bank’s reported earnings aren’t a hard number, like sales; for example, they depend a lot on the amount the bank sets aside to cover expected future losses on its loans. And some analysts expressed considerable doubt about Wells Fargo’s assumptions, as well as other accounting issues.

Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs announced a huge jump in profits from fourth-quarter 2008 to first-quarter 2009. But as analysts quickly noticed, Goldman changed its definition of “quarter” (in response to a change in its legal status), so that — I kid you not — the month of December, which happened to be a bad one for the bank, disappeared from this comparison.

I don’t want to go overboard here. Maybe the banks really have swung from deep losses to hefty profits in record time. But skepticism comes naturally in this age of Madoff.

Oh, and for those expecting the Treasury Department’s “stress tests” to make everything clear: the White House spokesman, Robert Gibbs, says that “you will see in a systematic and coordinated way the transparency of determining and showing to all involved some of the results of these stress tests.” No, I don’t know what that means, either.

3. There may be other shoes yet to drop. Even in the Great Depression, things didn’t head straight down. There was, in particular, a pause in the plunge about a year and a half in — roughly where we are now. But then came a series of bank failures on both sides of the Atlantic, combined with some disastrous policy moves as countries tried to defend the dying gold standard, and the world economy fell off another cliff.

Can this happen again? Well, commercial real estate is coming apart at the seams, credit card losses are surging and nobody knows yet just how bad things will get in Japan or Eastern Europe. We probably won’t repeat the disaster of 1931, but it’s far from certain that the worst is over.

4. Even when it’s over, it won’t be over. The 2001 recession officially lasted only eight months, ending in November of that year. But unemployment kept rising for another year and a half. (DB: market bottom marca 2003) The same thing happened after the 1990-91 recession. And there’s every reason to believe that it will happen this time too. Don’t be surprised if unemployment keeps rising right through 2010.

Why? “V-shaped” recoveries, in which employment comes roaring back, take place only when there’s a lot of pent-up demand. In 1982, for example, housing was crushed by high interest rates, so when the Fed eased up, home sales surged. That’s not what’s going on this time: today, the economy is depressed, loosely speaking, because we ran up too much debt and built too many shopping malls, and nobody is in the mood for a new burst of spending.

Employment will eventually recover — it always does. But it probably won’t happen fast.

So now that I’ve got everyone depressed, what’s the answer? Persistence.

History shows that one of the great policy dangers, in the face of a severe economic slump, is premature optimism. F.D.R. responded to signs of recovery by cutting the Works Progress Administration in half and raising taxes; the Great Depression promptly returned in full force. Japan slackened its efforts halfway through its lost decade, ensuring another five years of stagnation.

The Obama administration’s economists understand this. They say all the right things about staying the course. But there’s a real risk that all the talk of green shoots and glimmers will breed a dangerous complacency.

So here’s my advice, to the public and policy makers alike: Don’t count your recoveries before they’re hatched.

 

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To elektronsko sporocilo in vse morebitne priloge so poslovna skrivnost in namenjene izkljucno naslovniku. Ce ste sporocilo prejeli pomotoma, Vas prosimo, da obvestite posiljatelja, sporocilo pa takoj unicite. Kakrsnokoli razkritje, distribucija ali kopiranje vsebine sporocila je izrecno prepovedano. Ni nujno, da to sporocilo odraza uradno stalisce druzbe.

Elektronsko sporocilo je pregledano z antivirusnim programom.

 

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[Zanimivost] odpuščanja tudi v Yakuzi

via LOLFed by alyx on 4/21/09

Trump-yakuza

Is no line of work stable these days? Even the Japanese mob is thinning its ranks:

They made their money with sex, drugs and gambling but then invested much of it in high finance. Now Japan’s yakuza have their back to the wall as the economic crisis takes aim.

One of the victims of the downturn is Taro Hiramatsu, a heavily tattooed retired gangster in his 50s who said he never felt all that comfortable with the underworld’s new high-flying ways to begin with.

The yakuza have been hit by the financial crisis because they’ve invested in the stock market among other things,” said Hiramatsu, the number two of his crime gang until he was unceremoniously kicked out last year.

His own career as a gangster hit the skids, he said, when the cash dried up and he could no longer pay his 30,000-dollar monthly dues to the syndicate.

About one third of mid-level chiefs in his crime group, he said, have lost their jobs over the past year, many fleeced of their possessions with only their group insignia tattooed indelibly on their chests.

Middle management, always the first to go. Why the decline? Blame capitalism, of course. When you get away from running numbers and get into running money, you get too far away from your roots:

Sitting cross-legged in a Tokyo house, [Hiramatsu] says he doesn’t have much time for the new generation of mobsters who have traded the mean streets for the corporate boardrooms, and their nine-milimetre automatics for the Nikkei-225.

“I think that a majority of yakuza are reflecting on whether throwing away traditional for capitalist-style values was the best thing to do,” said Hiramatsu, musing on the modern ways of his centuries-old brotherhood.

“Bushido, the yakuza’s samurai spirit, is disappearing. The disappearance of those values is not only bad for yakuza but for Japan as a whole.”

Many fun quotes in this article, including one where Yakuza historian Jake Adelstein refers to the modern-day Yakuza as “Goldman Sachs with guns. ” Sorry that didn’t work out. But… why would they want to return to Hiramatsu’s beloved but ultra-violent bushido when they can probably, if they pitch it right, convince NBC to air a “Donald Trump: Yakuza Apprentice” reality show, where heavily tattooed 50-year-olds vie for a spot assisting The Donald in opening an international chain of combination condo/tattoo parlors?

(h/t to TonyS for the Photoshop; I think he even hung out late at the office to make this one.)

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To elektronsko sporocilo in vse morebitne priloge so poslovna skrivnost in namenjene izkljucno naslovniku. Ce ste sporocilo prejeli pomotoma, Vas prosimo, da obvestite posiljatelja, sporocilo pa takoj unicite. Kakrsnokoli razkritje, distribucija ali kopiranje vsebine sporocila je izrecno prepovedano. Ni nujno, da to sporocilo odraza uradno stalisce druzbe.

Elektronsko sporocilo je pregledano z antivirusnim programom.

 

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[Zanimivost] čuda računovodstva

via Paul Krugman by on 4/21/09

So the accounting rules say that a decline in the market value of a bank’s debt thanks to increased credit default swap spreads — that is, because investors think you’re more likely to fail — counts as a a profit. On the other hand, if your bank looks stronger, the spreads fall, and you book a loss.

FT Alphaville has the story. Citigroup reported

A net $2.5 billion positive CVA on derivative positions, excluding monolines, mainly due to the widening of Citi’s CDS spreads

while Morgan Stanley reported

Morgan Stanley would have been profitable this quarter if not for the dramatic improvement in our credit spreads - which is a significant positive development, but had a near-term negative impact on our revenues.

So Citigroup is profitable because investors think it’s failing, while Morgan Stanley is losing money because investors think it will survive. I am not making this up.

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To elektronsko sporocilo in vse morebitne priloge so poslovna skrivnost in namenjene izkljucno naslovniku. Ce ste sporocilo prejeli pomotoma, Vas prosimo, da obvestite posiljatelja, sporocilo pa takoj unicite. Kakrsnokoli razkritje, distribucija ali kopiranje vsebine sporocila je izrecno prepovedano. Ni nujno, da to sporocilo odraza uradno stalisce druzbe.

Elektronsko sporocilo je pregledano z antivirusnim programom.

 

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[Zanimivost] Promet na FAZ-u

(FAZ je Direxion Financial Bear 3X ETF)

Nimam pojma, kaj to pomeni, kapitulacijo shorterjev ali konkreten top v financialsih (bottom v FAZu), ampak skok v prometu je izjemen.

Outlook

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To elektronsko sporocilo in vse morebitne priloge so poslovna skrivnost in namenjene izkljucno naslovniku. Ce ste sporocilo prejeli pomotoma, Vas prosimo, da obvestite posiljatelja, sporocilo pa takoj unicite. Kakrsnokoli razkritje, distribucija ali kopiranje vsebine sporocila je izrecno prepovedano. Ni nujno, da to sporocilo odraza uradno stalisce druzbe.

Elektronsko sporocilo je pregledano z antivirusnim programom.

 

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[Mnenja] Stephen Roach: Averting Depression as Consumer in U.S. Fades

Točno tole je moje mnenje glede dolgoročnega razvoja dogodkov.
Jeba je, da te v tem poslu prej ubijeta kratek oz. srednji rok...

The Risks From Reviving the Debt Frankenstein

By Paul Kedrosky · Monday, April 13, 2009 · ShareThis

Good column from Stephen Roach o how the U.S.-led obsession with avoiding a Depression-repeat may work by reflating debt and spending -- right up until it doesn't:

Unwittingly, the Depression Foil might well end up recreating this madness. With the risk of a depression viewed as completely unacceptable to the global body politic, the full force of the policy arsenal is being aimed at jump-starting aggregate demand -- irrespective of the consequences such results might imply for a new build-up of global imbalances.

Once again, the U.S. is leading the charge. The Fed wants to get credit flowing again to still overextended American consumers, especially in mortgage markets. The Congress wants to stop the bleeding in the housing market -- irrespective of the persistent imbalance between supply and demand. And the White House wants consumers to start spending again -- to avoid the perceived pitfalls of the “paradox of thrift” brought about by too much saving.

Put it together and it all smacks of a dangerous sense of déjà vu: promoting a false recovery by kick-starting overextended, saving-short American consumers to borrow once again by leveraging their major asset.

Fortunately, the American consumer is smarter than the quick-fix Washington mindset. Shell-shocked families -- especially some 77 million baby boomers for whom retirement planning is an urgent imperative -- know they have no choice other than to save. The personal saving rate has risen from 0.8 percent to 4.2 percent in the past six months alone, and is on its way to a new post-bubble equilibrium that I would place in the 7.5 percent to 10 percent zone.

More here.

http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2009/04/the_risks_from.html

========================================================================================== To elektronsko sporocilo in vse morebitne priloge so poslovna skrivnost in namenjene izkljucno naslovniku. Ce ste sporocilo prejeli pomotoma, Vas prosimo, da obvestite posiljatelja, sporocilo pa takoj unicite. Kakrsnokoli razkritje, distribucija ali kopiranje vsebine sporocila je izrecno prepovedano. Ni nujno, da to sporocilo odraza uradno stalisce druzbe. Elektronsko sporocilo je pregledano z antivirusnim programom. This e-mail and any attachments may contain confidential and/or privileged information and is intended solely for the addressee. If you are not the intended recipient (or have received this e-mail in error) please notify the sender immediately and destroy this e-mail. Any unauthorized copying, disclosure or distribution of the material in this e-mail is strictly forbidden. This e-mail may not necessarily reflect the official viewpoint of the company. E-mail message is scanned by Anti-Virus Software.

[Zanimivost] slabi časi tudi za "grešne" industrije

naj bi veljalo, da "grešne" industrije cvetijo v recesiji... ampak itak že vemo, da tale recesija ni običajna:

Are Good Times, Bad Times?

The Vice Fund (VICEX), a mutual fund which invests in the so-called "sin" industries like distillers, casino operators and cigarette companies, has lost 42% over the past twelve months. That's actually four percentage points worse than the Standard & Poor's 500 index overall.

Meanwhile the Ave Maria suite of mutual funds, which invest only in companies that comply with certain Roman Catholic values, have done better. The Ave Maria Growth Fund is only down 33%. It's beaten Vice by nine points and the S&P by five.

It's hardly a miracle -- but maybe enough to raise eyebrows on Wall Street, a secular place where the usual invocation is "let us prey."

More here.  Hat tip to John Chilton.

http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2009/04/are-good-times-bad-times.html

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To elektronsko sporocilo in vse morebitne priloge so poslovna skrivnost in namenjene izkljucno naslovniku. Ce ste sporocilo prejeli pomotoma, Vas prosimo, da obvestite posiljatelja, sporocilo pa takoj unicite. Kakrsnokoli razkritje, distribucija ali kopiranje vsebine sporocila je izrecno prepovedano. Ni nujno, da to sporocilo odraza uradno stalisce druzbe.

Elektronsko sporocilo je pregledano z antivirusnim programom.

 

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[Zanimivost] Economist o delniških trgih

Economist o delniških trgih, dokaj pesimistično:
Investors have also been encouraged by signs that the pace of recession is slowing down. This factor has been dubbed “the second derivative”, or the rate of change of the rate of change. Bulls have taken heart that some of the strongest recoveries have been seen in emerging markets, usually the most geared play on the global economy. March’s 14.2% gain in the MSCI emerging-markets index was the best since December 1993.
 
But David Rosenberg of Bank of America Merrill Lynch, one of the few Wall Street economists to predict the current recession, is sceptical. He points out that although the Institute of Supply Management’s index of American manufacturing has rebounded from 32.9 to 36, the latter figure is still the fourth worst in the last 27 years. Capital Economics, a consultancy, says its recovery index suggests the probability that the American recession has ended is less than 10%.
 
Other indicators also cast doubt on the idea of a sharp rebound. The Baltic Dry Index of freight rates is seen as a measure of global trade activity (although it is also affected by the supply of shipping). It bottomed in December, a staggering 94% below the May 2008 high. From that point, it more than trebled by early March, a sign of a rebound in activity. But it has since resumed falling and is down by around a third in the last four weeks. Nor is there any sign of a big pickup in commodity prices; the Dow Jones AIG index is above its recent low on March 2nd but is still less than half last July’s peak.
CRE disaster še prihaja
Commercial property may also give investors as many headaches as residential. One of Boston’s most notable buildings, the John Hancock Tower, recently sold at a foreclosure auction for $660m. In 2006 it was bought for $1.3 billion. Standard & Poor’s, another rating agency, has said that many commercial mortgage-backed securities are highly susceptible to downgrades. The spread over Treasuries of the index by Markit, a data provider, of AAA-rated North American commercial mortgage-backed securities is now almost six percentage points, compared with just over one point last May.
valuation še ni primeren dnu bear marketa

Teun Draaisma, a Morgan Stanley strategist who has been one of the most successful forecasters of the market’s recent ups and downs, thinks the bear market is not over yet. The fundamentals in terms of corporate profits, house prices and bank lending have not yet bottomed, in his view. And valuations are not yet at fire-sale levels; the cyclically adjusted price-earnings ratio of the American market is 14.5, compared with previous bear-market lows in single digits. The dividend yield on the S&P 500 index is just 3.2%, and payouts are likely to be cut.
Konec je zmagovalen :)
Of course, markets can spot recoveries in profits and economic fundamentals well before they are confirmed by the official data. Investors might be showing such exceptional foresight at the moment, or they may simply be spotting imaginary signs of life in a dead parrot.

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To elektronsko sporocilo in vse morebitne priloge so poslovna skrivnost in namenjene izkljucno naslovniku. Ce ste sporocilo prejeli pomotoma, Vas prosimo, da obvestite posiljatelja, sporocilo pa takoj unicite. Kakrsnokoli razkritje, distribucija ali kopiranje vsebine sporocila je izrecno prepovedano. Ni nujno, da to sporocilo odraza uradno stalisce druzbe.

Elektronsko sporocilo je pregledano z antivirusnim programom.

 

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[Mnenja] finance is SO dead

Making Banking Boring

Published: April 9, 2009

Thirty-plus years ago, when I was a graduate student in economics, only the least ambitious of my classmates sought careers in the financial world. Even then, investment banks paid more than teaching or public service — but not that much more, and anyway, everyone knew that banking was, well, boring.

In the years that followed, of course, banking became anything but boring. Wheeling and dealing flourished, and pay scales in finance shot up, drawing in many of the nation’s best and brightest young people (O.K., I’m not so sure about the “best” part). And we were assured that our supersized financial sector was the key to prosperity.

Instead, however, finance turned into the monster that ate the world economy.

Recently, the economists Thomas Philippon and Ariell Reshef circulated a paper that could have been titled “The Rise and Fall of Boring Banking” (it’s actually titled “Wages and Human Capital in the U.S. Financial Industry, 1909-2006”). They show that banking in America has gone through three eras over the past century.

Before 1930, banking was an exciting industry featuring a number of larger-than-life figures, who built giant financial empires (some of which later turned out to have been based on fraud). This highflying finance sector presided over a rapid increase in debt: Household debt as a percentage of G.D.P. almost doubled between World War I and 1929.

During this first era of high finance, bankers were, on average, paid much more than their counterparts in other industries. But finance lost its glamour when the banking system collapsed during the Great Depression.

The banking industry that emerged from that collapse was tightly regulated, far less colorful than it had been before the Depression, and far less lucrative for those who ran it. Banking became boring, partly because bankers were so conservative about lending: Household debt, which had fallen sharply as a percentage of G.D.P. during the Depression and World War II, stayed far below pre-1930s levels.

Strange to say, this era of boring banking was also an era of spectacular economic progress for most Americans.

After 1980, however, as the political winds shifted, many of the regulations on banks were lifted — and banking became exciting again. Debt began rising rapidly, eventually reaching just about the same level relative to G.D.P. as in 1929. And the financial industry exploded in size. By the middle of this decade, it accounted for a third of corporate profits.

As these changes took place, finance again became a high-paying career — spectacularly high-paying for those who built new financial empires. Indeed, soaring incomes in finance played a large role in creating America’s second Gilded Age.

Needless to say, the new superstars believed that they had earned their wealth. “I think that the results our company had, which is where the great majority of my wealth came from, justified what I got,” said Sanford Weill in 2007, a year after he had retired from Citigroup. And many economists agreed.

Only a few people warned that this supercharged financial system might come to a bad end. Perhaps the most notable Cassandra was Raghuram Rajan of the University of Chicago, a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, who argued at a 2005 conference that the rapid growth of finance had increased the risk of a “catastrophic meltdown.” But other participants in the conference, including Lawrence Summers, now the head of the National Economic Council, ridiculed Mr. Rajan’s concerns.

And the meltdown came.

Much of the seeming success of the financial industry has now been revealed as an illusion. (Citigroup stock has lost more than 90 percent of its value since Mr. Weill congratulated himself.) Worse yet, the collapse of the financial house of cards has wreaked havoc with the rest of the economy, with world trade and industrial output actually falling faster than they did in the Great Depression. And the catastrophe has led to calls for much more regulation of the financial industry.

But my sense is that policy makers are still thinking mainly about rearranging the boxes on the bank supervisory organization chart. They’re not at all ready to do what needs to be done — which is to make banking boring again.

Part of the problem is that boring banking would mean poorer bankers, and the financial industry still has a lot of friends in high places. But it’s also a matter of ideology: Despite everything that has happened, most people in positions of power still associate fancy finance with economic progress.

Can they be persuaded otherwise? Will we find the will to pursue serious financial reform? If not, the current crisis won’t be a one-time event; it will be the shape of things to come.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/10/opinion/10krugman.html?_r=1

 

========================================================================================== To elektronsko sporocilo in vse morebitne priloge so poslovna skrivnost in namenjene izkljucno naslovniku. Ce ste sporocilo prejeli pomotoma, Vas prosimo, da obvestite posiljatelja, sporocilo pa takoj unicite. Kakrsnokoli razkritje, distribucija ali kopiranje vsebine sporocila je izrecno prepovedano. Ni nujno, da to sporocilo odraza uradno stalisce druzbe. Elektronsko sporocilo je pregledano z antivirusnim programom. This e-mail and any attachments may contain confidential and/or privileged information and is intended solely for the addressee. If you are not the intended recipient (or have received this e-mail in error) please notify the sender immediately and destroy this e-mail. Any unauthorized copying, disclosure or distribution of the material in this e-mail is strictly forbidden. This e-mail may not necessarily reflect the official viewpoint of the company. E-mail message is scanned by Anti-Virus Software.

[Zanimivost] South Korean Financial Blogger Faces 18 Months of Prison

Pisanje bloga je nevarna zadeva, tudi v razvitih državah (da Irana ne omenjamo).

South Korean Financial Blogger Faces 18 Months of Prison

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday April 14, @08:14
 
eldavojohn writes "A South Korean blogger named Park Dae-sung has been arrested and charged with destabilizing foreign markets by blogging about declining companies. This is the same blogger who predicted the economic downturn that has been experienced the world over. The Korean Times offers more information on the community college graduate and the accusations levied against him." Several readers have also sent in news that Omidreza Mirsayafi, an Iranian blogger arrested and imprisoned for his writings earlier this year, has now died in custody.

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To elektronsko sporocilo in vse morebitne priloge so poslovna skrivnost in namenjene izkljucno naslovniku. Ce ste sporocilo prejeli pomotoma, Vas prosimo, da obvestite posiljatelja, sporocilo pa takoj unicite. Kakrsnokoli razkritje, distribucija ali kopiranje vsebine sporocila je izrecno prepovedano. Ni nujno, da to sporocilo odraza uradno stalisce druzbe.

Elektronsko sporocilo je pregledano z antivirusnim programom.

 

This e-mail and any attachments may contain confidential and/or privileged information and is intended solely for the addressee. If you are not the intended recipient (or have received this e-mail in error) please notify the sender immediately and destroy this e-mail. Any unauthorized copying, disclosure or distribution of the material in this e-mail is strictly forbidden. This e-mail may not necessarily reflect the official viewpoint of the company.

E-mail message is scanned by Anti-Virus Software.