Monthly Archives: May 2012
by Mitch Feierstein about 11 years 9 months ago
‘Failing dismally’: Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman says austerity isn’t working Paul Krugman, a Nobel Prize-winning economist and writer for the New York Times, is in London at the moment telling us that we’ve got things wrong. On Tuesday, he gave a lecture at the London School of Economics entitled, ‘Austerity Thy Name is Vanity’. […]
Earlier this week, on 21 May, the Financial Times ran a short piece which opened thus: ‘There has been no official announcement. No terms or conditions have been disclosed. But Greece’s banking system is being propped up by an estimated €100bn or so of emergency liquidity provided by the country’s central bank – approved secretly […]
Has nothing changed? Why the Facebook IPO proves you can never trust a bank
by Mitch Feierstein about 11 years 9 months ago
About four weeks ago, I wrote on my blog that Facebook was heading for a ridiculous valuation when it was launched on the stockmarket. That wasn’t because I think it’s a bad company – pretty clearly a company that makes a billion dollars in profits after only a few years of life is a remarkable […]
A Short Note to Obama, Romney, and the Mainstream Media
by Mitch Feierstein about 11 years 9 months ago
Summer’s coming. An election campaign’s pending. Obama’s in favor of gay marriage. Mitt Romney’s trying to figure out his vice presidential pick. The mainstream media is trying to second-guess his choices even before they’re even made. But, guys, there are some big issues out here. You know, real ones that affect real things in the […]
You know those summer thunderstorms we used to have? You’d be sitting out in a warm garden somewhere, sipping something cold and white, looking at lightning flashing on the horizon and counting the seconds until you could hear the thunder. Well, it’s like that now, only the gap between the flash and the rumble is […]
I don’t want to crow, but I’ve been predicting this for years: the writedowns of Greek debt, accompanied by swingeing austerity conditions, popular unrest, and (shortly) Greek exit from the Euro. You don’t have to take my word for that: my book, Planet Ponzi, pretty much mapped out the course we’re now taking. But although […]
A day at Wimbledon This week, Mervyn King, the long-standing Governor of the Bank of England, said about the 2008 financial crisis, ‘We should have shouted from the rooftops that a system had been built in which banks were too important to fail, that banks had grown too […]
by Mitch Feierstein about 11 years 10 months ago
Yesterday mortgage rates rose. In normal times, that wouldn’t really be news. Sometimes interest rates rise, sometimes they fall. Sometimes savers lose, sometimes borrowers do. Swings and roundabouts. Only – have you noticed? – these aren’t normal times. The Bank of England’s main lending rate has been glued to 0.5% for more than three years […]