I’m going off topic a bit, because earlier this week the author accused me of ‘cognitive disonance’ because of my stand against his support of more regulation while claiming the ideological title of libertarian.
Strip away the rest of M. Wolf’s arguments, and fundamentally he believes that government backing of financial risks is at the heart of the current bubble.
From the article:
***At the heart of the financial industry are highly leveraged businesses. Their central activity is creating and trading assets of uncertain value, while their liabilities are, as we have been reminded, guaranteed by the state. This is a licence to gamble with taxpayers’ money. The mystery is that crises erupt so rarely.***
As the newest measures by the NAR show, for every good regulation there will be attempts (that fail and succeed) to roll back the reform for the good of one politically powerful group or another. What we need to guard against is not the ‘greed’ of an industry, but the welfare of the overall country.
People can and should take risk, can and should be allowed to fail, industries can and should be allowed to act like lemmings and follow each other into financial oblivion. What they should not be allowed to do is take the taxpayer with them.
Asian currencies continue to sell off vs the $ on the heels of the news yesterday that South Korea said they will look into hot money inflows stemming from the $ carry trade and the Bank of Indonesia said they are looking into the foreign buying of bills. This follows the news a few weeks ago that Taiwan was limiting foreign deposit holdings and Brazil was taxing foreign inflow transactions. As I mentioned yesterday, we may have reached a short term pain threshold in terms of $ weakness and foreign countries are fighting back as they certainly won't wait for...
June 24th, 2009 at 7:40 am
[...] « Mortgage Broker’s Anti-Appraisal Reform Lobbying Effort What will the history books say? [...]
June 24th, 2009 at 7:52 am
I’m going off topic a bit, because earlier this week the author accused me of ‘cognitive disonance’ because of my stand against his support of more regulation while claiming the ideological title of libertarian.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/095722f6-6028-11de-a09b-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1
Strip away the rest of M. Wolf’s arguments, and fundamentally he believes that government backing of financial risks is at the heart of the current bubble.
From the article:
***At the heart of the financial industry are highly leveraged businesses. Their central activity is creating and trading assets of uncertain value, while their liabilities are, as we have been reminded, guaranteed by the state. This is a licence to gamble with taxpayers’ money. The mystery is that crises erupt so rarely.***
As the newest measures by the NAR show, for every good regulation there will be attempts (that fail and succeed) to roll back the reform for the good of one politically powerful group or another. What we need to guard against is not the ‘greed’ of an industry, but the welfare of the overall country.
People can and should take risk, can and should be allowed to fail, industries can and should be allowed to act like lemmings and follow each other into financial oblivion. What they should not be allowed to do is take the taxpayer with them.
June 24th, 2009 at 9:44 am
Why would banks ever go along with this, now that they are likely stuck with the mortgage?
June 24th, 2009 at 11:01 am
For more on HVCC:
http://www.freddiemac.com/singlefamily/home_valuation.html
June 25th, 2009 at 12:36 am
these NAMB catz are so dense, to be nice about it, that even their Logo, forget their Acronym, looks like the Viet Cong flag..
http://www.casperplatoon.com/FlagHistory.htm
June 25th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
Yeah, MEH, but the VC won, too.