Monday, March 10, 2008

Chicanery and exploitation are the key

[Trading in junk bonds hasn't been "right" since the fall. Many of the markets for short-term debt securities are becoming illiquid as well. Why markets are self-destructing in this way remains a puzzle; dump on markets all you want but why here and now?
Loyal MR readers will know that I am usually an economic optimist but at the moment I am worried... Is/was the subprime crisis simply a mask for a more general revaluation of the meaning and extent of liquidity? Are such revaluations always so bumpy and so lacking in locally stable iterative processes? As the Chinese would say, we live in interesting times.
What's going on with the economy? from Marginal Revolution by Tyler Cowen]

[A Full Blown Recession & America In Denial Posted by Amar Shah on March 8, 2008 Democracy failing: America now run by 35,000 lobbyists!
Forget government “of the people, by the people, and for the people." Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” is now a small group of 35,000 highly paid, greedy lobbyists demanding handouts. They run America from the shadows, for those at the top of the economic food chain and vastly outnumber Washington’s 537 elected officials.]

[CRISIL to classify market instruments on complexity Economic Times, India - 6 Mar 2008 MUMBAI: CRISIL plans to classify capital market instruments based on their complexity, to provide greater transparency for investors.]

If the subprime crisis stimulates a revaluation of recent history of the US economy, then the honest answers to its success will perhaps be chicanery and exploitation, and not simply efficiency or innovation. [TNM]

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