Submit a Story!
Votes
topics:

vote down flag
newyorker.com - 5/8/2009
Debating the Obama Administration’s Bank Plan: The Balance Sheet: Online Only: The New Yorker
—
Over at The Baseline Scenario, Simon Johnson and James Kwak respond to the stress tests with a post arguing, once again, that any signs that the banking system might not be in terrible shape are false, and that the government should step in and take over the unhealthy banks. In place of real ...
newyorker.com - 5/8/2009
Are We Turning Japanese?: The Balance Sheet: Online Only: The New Yorker
— newyorker.com — Over the past few days, the idea that the Obama Administration’s failure to nationalize the banks may... very well doom the U.S. economy to the kind of Lost Decade that Japan endured has become ubiquitous. (Here are Paul Krugman , Joseph Stiglitz , Mark ... (more) Are We Turning Japanese?: The Balance Sheet: Online ...
Comments vote down Economist's View found this 5/8/2009found this
newyorker.com - 5/5/2009
The I.M.F. and American Banks: The Balance Sheet: Online Only: The New Yorker
— newyorker.com — In the article in today’s Times on the stress tests , one of those legendary unnamed “senior... Administration officials” says, about the nineteen banks that the government tested, that “none of them is insolvent.” This is, of course, a conclusion that ... (more) The I.M.F. and American Banks: The Balance Sheet: Online ...

Comments vote down Economist's View found this 5/5/2009found this

Blog Reactions

Economist's View:  "Are We Turning Japanese?"

The Baseline Scenario:  James Surowiecki and Me

Comments
Blog Reactions

"Are We Turning Japanese?"
Economist's View — ... to earn their way out of trouble—recapitalizing themselves over the next couple of years via profits. But the skeptics suggest that this is a recipe for disaster, because this didn’t work in Japan, where banks that had been propped up by the government were never able to earn their way back to health, eventually requiring the government to step in and take more decisive action. ... As I’ve said before, there’s something peculiar about the repeated insistence that Japan’s experience demonstrates that the Obama approach can’t work. Japanese banks may ...

James Surowiecki and Me
The Baseline Scenario — ... Back when I had time to read The New Yorker, I was a big fan of James Surowiecki. I would always look for his column; if it was there, it was usually the first thing I would read. Unfortunately, he’s no fan of mine. ...

Related Content
The Balance Sheet: Online Only: The New Yorker
newyorker.com 11/3/2008 — The Nikkei Index has rallied sharply this week (although it was down today). But it’s still near its twenty-five-year low, and, in nominal terms, its value is less than a fourth of what it was in 1989, at the peak of Japan’s stock-market bubble. In ...
The Balance Sheet: Online Only: The New Yorker
newyorker.com 10/28/2008 — A couple of weeks ago, economist Brad DeLong suggested (at least semi-seriously, I think) that now might be a good time to “take the Social Security Trust Fund balance out of Treasuries and move it into equities.” As he put it, “Buy low, sell high ...
The Balance Sheet: Online Only: The New Yorker
newyorker.com 10/21/2008 — One of the peculiarities of the U.S. budget process is that we don’t distinguish between “expenditures” that are actually long-term investments, often with high returns for the economy as a whole, and expenditures that are consumption in the ...
The Balance Sheet: Online Only: The New Yorker
newyorker.com 10/20/2008 — Lefty Rosenthal—the antihero of Nick Pileggi’s “Casino” and the model for Robert De Niro’s character in the movie of the same name—died a few days ago, which I learned thanks to a great obituary notice (is that a contradiction in terms?) by Bruce ...
Who Can At Least Tolerate the Geithner Plan?: The Balance Sheet: Online Only: The New Yorker
newyorker.com 3/24/2009 — Most of what’s been written about Tim Geithner’s plan for a public-private partnership to purchase toxic assets from banks has been, unsurprisingly, negative, since Geithner’s plan does not involve the preferred solution of most bloggers and pundits: ...
The Balance Sheet: Online Only: The New Yorker
newyorker.com 11/16/2008 — Mortgage financier Freddie Mac, which is now majority-controlled by the federal government, reported a $25.3 billion loss in its most recent quarter, and said it would be asking the government for $14 billion to keep its business going. Understanding ...
Nationalization Will Not Be Easy: The Balance Sheet: Online Only: The New Yorker
newyorker.com 1/21/2009 — Like Kevin Drum , I think that as the “nationalize now” meme has taken hold in the blogosphere, people are talking about nationalization “awfully casually.” One way this manifests itself is in the argument that the only reason people are skeptical of ...
Why Is the Japanese Experience So Important?: The Balance Sheet: Online Only: The New Yorker
newyorker.com 3/14/2009 — In the debate about how to deal with our banking crisis, pundits have made frequent reference to a few key historical episodes, using them as examples of good or bad policy, and extrapolating from them to tell policymakers what they should do today. ...
Where Would Bank Nationalization Stop?: The Balance Sheet: Online Only: The New Yorker
newyorker.com 1/20/2009 — Felix Salmon, who has been banging the drums for the U.S. government to start nationalizing banks, cites a piece by the economist William Buiter as supporting the argument that the U.S. should nationalize Citigroup and Bank of America. But it’s a bit ...
What Does It Mean to “Bury” a Bank?: The Balance Sheet: Online Only: The New Yorker
newyorker.com 3/9/2009 — On this weekend’s talk shows, Republican senators talked tough about letting troubled banks go under. John McCain said the government should let “these banks fail,” while Richard Shelby of Alabama said we need to “close them, get them out of business. ...
Obama's First Debacle? — The Big Money 5/5/2009
If Chrysler can't achieve viability after the administration's attempt to salvage it, the failure will be the president's first big flub: ( Click here to read the full post. )   If Chrysler fails in the marketplace again two or three years ...
Feds Probe Eric Schmidt — The Big Money 5/5/2009
Google just can't seem to get out of the feds' spotlight. Last year's proposed ad arrangement with Yahoo first attracted concerns that Google was dangerously close to assembling an unbreakable monopoly on search ads, and since then, the federal ...
Barack Obama and the carmakers: An offer you can't refuse — The Economist: Full print edition 5/7/2009
In its rush to save Detroit, the American government is trashing creditors’ rights NO ONE who lent money to General Motors (GM) or Chrysler can have been unaware of their dire finances. Nor can workers have failed to notice their ...
Still Picking Apart the Stress Test Results — The Big Money 5/10/2009
For better or worse, plenty of people are looking at the bank stress test results released late last week as a benchmark for the state of the financial sector and the economy as a whole. The New York Times cautions that any overly positive spin on ...