I did a few minutes of schtick on NPR yesterday about nationalizing the banks:
click for audio
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Source:
Banking On Nationalization
Madeleine Brand
NPR Day to Day, February 25, 2009
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101144619
Please use the comments to demonstrate your own ignorance, unfamiliarity with empirical data, ability to repeat discredited memes, and lack of respect for scientific knowledge. Also, be sure to create straw men and argue against things I have neither said nor even implied. Any irrelevancies you can mention will also be appreciated. Lastly, kindly forgo all civility in your discourse . . . you are, after all, anonymous.
"Dollar depreciation leads to higher inflation and ultimately forces foreign creditors to question their rationale and indeed their sanity for continuing purchases of U.S. Treasuries." -Bill Gross
Signs continue that European markets are getting tired. The Spanish and Italian stock markets, big beneficiaries of the sharp decline in their bond yields over the past few months are falling to the lowest since Feb 1. The European bank index is at a 1 1/2 week low after earnings reports from Commerzbank and Credit Ag (RBS bouncing although reporting weaker than expected earnings) were disappointing. This market action is in spite of the German IFO business confidence figure which rose to a 7 month high coming in a touch above expectations and Italian consumer confidence which bounced more than...
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February 26th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
Sen Bernie Sanders: Greed & Foreclosure Crisis
http://tinyurl.com/bkwhnl
One of few people in Congress who speaks truth to corrupt power.
February 26th, 2009 at 12:44 pm
great spot Barry “we already have a ‘bad’ bank…Citi”
LOL
sing along with Vikram:
At first I was afraid
I was petrified
Kept thinking they would never let
Our credit ratings slide
but then they cancelled all the flights
On the Citi corporate jets
And I regret
And I learned how to write off debt
http://thereformedbroker.com/2009/02/26/vikram-pandit-i-will-survive/
February 26th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
A few months ago people scoffed when Obama was called a Socialist.
His 2009 budget amounts to $11,833 in spending for every American and $1.75 Trillion dollar deficit. The average American household earns $55k a year. Does anyone with an ounce of common sense really believe Obama can cut the deficit to $600B in four years by raising taxes on the top 2%? Does anyone really believe higher taxes on business and the weathy won’t have any impact on economic growth.
Is there anyone in the MSM with a pair who will challenge this recklessness? I think not.
February 26th, 2009 at 2:09 pm
Great spot, Barry! I loved your response to the banks being against it because it would wipe out the shareholders!
February 26th, 2009 at 2:40 pm
Barry, great interview with NPR! I have been attempting to convince people with the idea of a ‘capital conversion program’, similar to a Chapter 11 restructuring, but have yet to see policy-makers or pundits discuss the idea. Why not convert C’s and BAC’s entire capital [not just the TARP preferred, including debentures, etc. into common or perhaps a convertible with a strike equivalent to current share trading levels?
The current equity would end up with nominal direct, or as-converted ownership, Treasury would have [presumably] a less-than 50% interest and the bondholders would be converted at par and most likely end up as the largest owners. The Treasury, OCC, FDIC and FED could go all the way through the bank’s capital structure at par until the TSE ratio hits a ‘super-capitalized’ rate, say 12%. The depositors, of course, would not be touched.
Even with WaMu, the bondholders at the holding company were wiped out. This at least would give them common ownership. Yes, they would most likely complain very loudly, but better than pumping in additional who-knows-how much additional TARP cash to save the creditors.
February 26th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
Barry, Barry, Boychick….What would your mother say if she heard you say CRAP, especially on radio. Oy Vey….
February 26th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
Barry, you’re going to have to eat a box of sedatives to fit in with the NPR tone. “You bought a crappy company, it’s going to zero. Next subject.”
See, to fit in on NPR, you have to walk listeners through a hyper-self-conscious and gently ironic emotional analysis of EVERYTHING.
NPR storyteller: This morning I woke up and had a strange thought. How would it be if I actually — gasp — bought some stock?
[Insert trendy retro organ music here]
Storyteller: I mean, who am *I* to buy some stock? Just a guy with a Women’s Studies degree from Yale…
[trendy retro organ music continues]
Storyteller: So I asked myself: “Atticus, are you really READY for this?”
[back to organ music]
February 26th, 2009 at 6:58 pm
Goodness it sure is nice to hear you on NPR on occasion, as they tend to give a little too much air time to the GS/Paulson/Bernake/Geitnher crowd.
It is particularly nice that they give YOU the time to succinctly express your views without the CNBC type interruptions/talk-overs ruining any decent exchange of ideas or real debate.
However, it would appear that you got to pick the questions?
February 26th, 2009 at 8:23 pm
@ka4: Thanks for the link. Yeah. Leave it to a Representative from Vermont to get it right. Duh. He gets to represent his constituent’s interests. Well, maybe he does get outside campaign money, but I’d be surprised. He’s kind of like part of the principled fringe that gets listened to and then ignored when it comes to a vote. Been there, done that. BTW does he walk the talk?
February 26th, 2009 at 8:40 pm
Anybody able to get the NPR audio to play on anything other than a Windows machine?
For unfathomable reasons, they have switched their audio playback client app to a FLASH applet — I am dumbfounded. Never heard of anyone dumb enough to use Flash as an audio medium. First time for everything, I guess.
February 26th, 2009 at 10:56 pm
Nice. I love it. The truth hurts doesn’t it? “You bought a crappy company and it’s going to zero” It’s just the way it goes and you can’t write an equation that makes it otherwise.
I’m writing this on a MacBook. I suppose it’s a flash world now. It sounds worse than mp3s. What next..
February 27th, 2009 at 4:56 am
not only was BR on NPR, yesterday one of the reporters even referenced Bastiat!
dispelling my, momentary, disbelief was “[trendy retro organ music continues]“.
for further: “Sweet Anticipation proposes a psychological theory of expectation that grew out of the author’s experimental efforts to understand how music evokes emotions. These efforts evolved into a general theory of expectation that will prove informative to readers interested in cognitive science and evolutionary psychology as well as those interested in music. The book describes a set of psychological mechanisms and illustrates how these mechanisms work in the case of music. The notated examples given in the book can be heard at this web site…”
http://csml.som.ohio-state.edu/SweetAnticipation/
February 27th, 2009 at 9:48 am
I heard your interview on NPR and thought the interviewer’s response at the end was interesting. She called you very opinionated, like you were a new species that she’d never met before. I didn’t hear you as opinionated, but as someone well aware of the facts and able to articulate them.