Charlie Rose

titotito  03/01/2009 12:57 PM Report

didn't mishkin write

a report "Financial Stability in Iceland" (2006)

stating that Iceland's economic fundamentals were strong?

ha ha.

doodahdaze  02/23/2009 10:31 PM Report

Sir fairweatherfan -

I don't see any talk of endless free lunches in Fractal's proposal... Inflation?!, Hell!... Today's economists have no problem chasing and catching up to inflation. It's "deflation" that is the big unknown. So go ahead and eat your stale cake before some stupid people steal it from ya.

trevorfairweather  02/23/2009 06:32 PM Report

Fractal: well that certainly is fool proof recipie for endless inflation. Thats right friends "TheFractalist" plan for free lunch will leave you with a horrible case of indigestion.

Populism is stupid.

PS. Fractal, if you have some time on your hands you should come over and show me how to eat cake without eating cake.

PPS Does anyone posting here not get their other news from huffpo, daily kos or at worst Alex Jones.

tartufe  02/22/2009 04:50 PM Report

Fractal - is your screen name and your proposal in conflict? A unifying National Bank (a la a European-type central bank?) works for me. Especially if replaces the Federal Reserve and the big NY based predatory maggots. A do-over of the whole system (maybe throw in Andreessen's ethernet banking concepts?) is overdue.

doodahdaze  02/21/2009 12:04 PM Report

To TheFractalist - I'm not sure I understood all of that, but it sounds like it could work. <smile> For awhile at least. It definitely SOUNDS "more civilized" than the alternatives. <still smiling... I think>

"Keep your eyes on the road, your hands upon the wheel." - Barney Fife, CEO SuperBanker

TheFractalist  02/21/2009 10:05 AM Report

A New National Bank: A Modest Proposal from the Economic Fractalist

A Modest Proposal

The People's Bank of The United States

(And Debt Negation For The Little People)

.... There is ardent desire to recreate the old model of Western consumer spending (in balanced moderation) and reliving the dream.

(The US and global macroeconomic system is in dire need to press a 'reset' button.)

Instead of creating 'new bad banks' to service toxic assets; instead of bailing out or carving up bad old banks that are currently insolvent on a composite basis; instead of doing the worse of all and assuming all the low brow and rapaciously greedy idiot bankers' and financial industries' leveraged liabilities and nationalizing bad banks (and their crappy assets), perhaps... perhaps... the creation of a 'new national good bank' represents a better pathway.

The Federal Reserve has often demonstrated that banking is only a manipulation of electronic ones and zeros (backed by political and social stability and weapons and reasonably reliable delivery systems).

The creation of a new United States 'People's or Citizens' Bank' is proposed. In this reset system, the American Taxpayers' People's Bank can borrow directly from the US Treasury at extremely low rates bypassing the Federal Reserve. Who wouldn't agree that after the past seven and a half decades of catastrophic performance, a little competition for the old Fed may be in order. Better still, no borrowing from the Treasury is necessary - just use the couple of trillions of dollars of virtual money in the Social Security Trust Fund that is backed by the full faith and best intentions of present and future taxing federal politicians. Leveraging those virtual dollars in an exponential fractional manner could double or qradruple dectuple the amount available for lending. Think of it: 4 or 80 trillion to lend at low enough rates rates that would make the Japanese government unnerved. Perhaps a concept of 'sufficiently negative' rates could be engineered to 'significantly enhance' borrowing. Lending could target new mortgage applications and new entrepreneurial industries that are defined as beneficial to the country. Even new American furniture factories, clothing textile plants, new automobile companies, private energy and energy grid companies, clean water companies, nuclear power plants ... entrepreneur's of all sorts - could receive expedited loans to create useful productive companies and job opportunities.

A plethora of newly unemployed lower level banking managers and loan officers from collapsing financial institutions and FDIC closed banks could be hired at nominal rates to manage the transactions and assure reasonable credit worthiness. Likely, toxic banks and financial industries load stoned with their untenable crimson balance sheets and blighted past job performances, would fortunately not score out as a good enough credit risk to borrow from the new People's Bank.

Ultimately the US Social Security Trust fund would be backed both by hard collateral assets and by its doubly benefited taxpayers both receiving loans and paying interest on those new mortgage, new business, and new industry creation loans. This would of course be in addition to the high interest rates that the Treasury is already currently paying for the use of this virtual money.... double interest earnings for the US Taxpayer - that's a real deal by any standards.

And if the toxic private banks and financial industries go under because of their Darwinian inescapable toxic debt and inability to see the inevitable qualitative results of bad risk taking, and if banking and financial stock owners lose all their equity valuation, and if the well bonused CEO's ultimately lose their jobs and their wealth...and by popular demand.. go to jail.... ces't la vie.

Mortgage debtors and squatters not yet evicted from their homes should be entitled to win the mini lotto by outlasting the terminal moments of survival of this toxic entities that have so departed from traditional banking practices ... and all outstanding debt on mortgages 'owned' by insolvent banks .. also by popular demand... are canceled out by national federal law. (That should win some votes for reelection.) After all if the lending banks and financial institutions went under, they didn't really have the money as a real asset in their locked-box vaults to lend in the first place - an illegal banking practice if there ever was one.

This debt negation plan would overnight eliminate a huge chunk of outstanding toxic debt where valuations of assets are much lower than the debt owed by home owners. These entrapped new serfs and indentured servants of the real estate and banking industry now owe much more than the value of their homes will ever be worth in their near or entire life times. These scammed citizens would be unencumbered and unbound from their unreasonable, illegal. and unethical contracts.

This freedom from the banking yoke would quickly readjust, reset, the asset valuation-debt equilibrium and perhaps prevent social and political instability, which is surely coming. Houses were really never close to being worth the goosed-up prices that the bad banks and the mindless real estate hawkers leveraged and perpetrated on American citizens relative to the ongoing mortgage holders' wages.

Debt negation would immediately help to increase asset valuations, reverse the deflationary spiral, get people spending again, and jump start the economy faster than any of the available logically inconsistent plans. Even inflation would make a come back making equity speculators, gold hoarders, oil barons, and Prius owners happy as clams.

The People's Bank of The United States - it has a ring to it.

In this milieu of hair brained and undo able ideas; The People Bank deserves consideration; don't count it out.

And… the little people .. may ... for once in their lives ... have a chance to best the deals the bankers have been getting since 1913.

paulch6  02/21/2009 08:22 AM Report

lulu36 you are on target. articulate and concise.

lulu35  02/20/2009 05:30 PM Report

Mark Zandi worked with congressional democrats to construct the stimulus bill, I would think he would have the integrity to mention that fact before he began talking about how it would save millions of jobs, it was obvious no other guest believed that, which was why he was the only one who answered the question in the positive. You can't trust any pundit they all have agendas and Charlie Rose should disclose more then he does about his guests political leaning, especially because he passes off so many liberals and dems guests as objective pundits, opinions and commentators.

doodahdaze  02/20/2009 02:54 PM Report

To Mr. Ricardo - Like I said Sir, "The U.S. did NOT drag the world into a new depression!". To the contrary, "The WORLD!, dragged the U.S.!, into a new great depression!

The world imposes it's problems on the U.S. MUCH MUCH MUCH MORE than the U.S. imposes it's problems on the rest of the world. U.S. Americans GIVE to charities to benefit those outside the U.S. MUCH MUCH MUCH MORE than citizens of the rest of the world (Even the late, smug liberal, Peter Jennings, attested to that fact.).

There is no way in hell, that you or anybody else can proove without a shadow of doubt that the U.S. is "responsible" for the upcoming upheaval!!!

tartufe  02/20/2009 02:51 PM Report

Ricardo, you may be right at times, but your incessant chest thumping makes any acceptance of your points begrudgingly difficult.

Remove all your sentences that start with "I" and it would be a good start.

With apologies to the author of "Snark," as this is a snarky entry.

tartufe  02/20/2009 02:44 PM Report

The egregiously greedy big credit card banks are once again proving why they don't deserve to exist. They are now locking in certain states unemployment payouts to be limited to their credit cards that charge $1.50 per transaction.

Predatory maggots that need purging.

A culture that tolerates these type institutions, a la Citigroup et al, deserves all the calamity they get.

Ricardo_Amaral  02/20/2009 02:25 PM Report

Reply to doodahdaze

You wrote: Besides, how do you know "the U.S. dragged the world into a new great depression"?

I wrote that article 4 years ago and in February 2009 it looks like that prediction came to past.

I have been consistently right about most of my predictions and I make them away before other people can see it coming. You can read some of my articles at this website:

Author and Columnist: Ricardo C. Amaral

http://brazzilnews.blogspot.com/

Most of the people who used to criticize my articles and postings on Brazzil magazine and also at the Elite Trader forum are long gone, they still are reading my articles and postings, but they stopped criticizing me after most my predictions came to past one after another on a consistent basis.

.

Slim  02/20/2009 02:11 PM Report

After viewing your program on the recent economic recovery program one thing became obvious; you're incapable of convening a panel that can integrate where we've come from with where we need to go. A panel that analyzes past mistakes with an eye toward applying those lessons in the pursuit of a solution. The driving force behind these past errors, massive and agreigous though they may be, is straightforwardly simple; human greed, and political corruption in furtherance of this avarice. On Wall street, ever larger and more obscene salaries and bonuses were the raison d'etre and fraud its preferred tactic. Many of our financial institutions aren't just sick, they're malignant, and radical surgery is required to save the patient. All bad actors should be shown the door sans golden parachute. This apply's to the political arena as well, voters will administer the appropriate cure, come mid-term elections, to those politicians who helped create this mess and now cynically seek to advantage their careers by opposing all efforts to end it. Also, if you're going to include in your panel purely partisan opinions, have Miss Easton learn to deliver, however insincerely, some Democratic talking points as well as the tired and discredited Republican ones she is so practiced at delivering.

doodahdaze  02/20/2009 12:02 PM Report

Mr. Ricardo, many postal, and now, cyber "economic gurus" have been "predicting" the next "Great Depression" "to swallow the masses coming next week, send me some money and I'll tell you all about it" since, essentually the last "Great Depression". "Selective memory" is the path to eternal "I told you I was right." BULLSHIT!!!.

Besides, how do you know "the U.S. dragged the world into a new great depression."? I think it can be argued, that the world dragged the U.S. into a new great depression!!! The U.S. basicly has to do all the dirty work that the rest of the selfish, childish world is either too lazy or too cowardly to address. What do you think of them apples?!

Ricardo_Amaral  02/20/2009 02:57 AM Report

In January of 2003 I already had started writing on my articles about the coming new Great Depression.

It has been very clear to me for many years that the new great depression was on its way and the Perfect Storm was about to hit the United States and the global economy.

Four years ago I wrote an article describing the financial meltdown that was going to happen before the presidential election of 2008, and how the U.S. dragged the world into a new great depression.

Today one of the few economists who have grasped the severity of what is going on is Mr. Nouriel Roubini.

Larry Summers mentioned on your show that he is aware of the business cycle. I hope he is also aware of the Nikolai Kondratieff long-term economic cycle.

Larry Summers also mentioned the influence that John Maynard Keynes had on his way of thinking right now – but I wonder what happens when we have a cocktail mixture of John Maynard Keynes with Joseph A. Schumpeter.

I wrote an article about John Maynard Keynes and Joseph A. Schumpeter which was published on Brazzil Magazine - September 06, 2006 “While the American Dream Is Outsourced Brazil Drives the World into the Future” - Written by Ricardo C. Amaral

http://www.brazzil.com/component/content/article/171-september-2006/9684.html

...Technology Changed Everything - Right now, we are in the middle of a historical turning point. In the last few years we had a revolution in technology, and today we can do things that were not viable only two years ago.

***

It’s 2008. The U.S. Has Dragged the World into a Depression.

http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=124509

Over 75 years ago Wall Street Crashed; but today the New Crash is already underway...

http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=117003

…The truth is the world is overdue for a new economic depression. Historically we had a depression in the world once every 55 to 60 years. The last world depression was over 60 years ago. A Russian economist, Nikolai Kondratieff, published a study in 1926 showing that a very long-term economic cycle existed. His major premise was that capitalist economies had a pattern of long wave cycles of boom and bust. The bust cycle repeated itself approximately every 60 years. If you had read Kondratieff's paper in 1926, you would have known that an economic depression was around the corner.

Kondratieff identified four distinct phases the economy goes through during each cycle: 1) Inflationary growth, 2) Stagflation, 3) Deflationary growth, and finally 4) Depression-falling prices, falling stock prices, falling profits, debt collapse.

***

I wrote the following on October 29, 2004:

…This time around, "Derivatives" will be the trigger to a massive stock market collapse.

Any way, today we are away overdue for a new stock market crash, and worldwide depression.

.

tartufe  02/20/2009 01:15 AM Report

Marc Andreessen promoted the idea of an entirely new banking system based on cloud (my word not his) computing. New banks - an opportunity to replace the old. Letting the old fail as a natural redemptive and cleansing process would be a natural transition to an equitable and fair and honest system (this time around). Too soon? Maybe. Too bad.

tartufe  02/19/2009 11:22 PM Report

The PBS "Inside the Meltdown" told of the billions in insurance via Credit Default Swaps (CDS) at Lehman and AIG. Gimmicky financial instruments packaged, leveraged and repackaged and crow-barred the world into financial collapse. The taxpayer should not BAILOUT any institution that was guilty of their use.

To qualify for bailout all banks and institutions accepting such bails out should have to publish AN HONEST balance sheet in the Wall Street Journal, NYT and the Financial Times. Liabilities attributed to gimmickry too-clever-by-fractions financial instruments should automatically disqualify them. They should be exposed to investors and allowed to fail if the market so dictates (without federal taxpayer assistance). Paulson's lip-service devotion to laissez faire free-market capitalism (that he so reluctantly disregarded) should be assured of free reign.

An ancilliary benefit may be realized if most of the users of gimmickry instruments are also the biggest credit card issuing banks. A thorough purging of these predators would in itself be a stimulus if it meant the debtors were released from their confiscatory burdens by default.

Citigroup et al a perfect example.

ShalomFreedman  02/19/2009 10:58 PM Report

Another informative public service broadcast in which Charlie Rose is on top of it, and asks the right questions. Unfortunately the answers are not very encouraging. Mark Zandi did have some optimism and spoke about a possible turnaround , if not in the coming year, then in the year following. Nina Easton provided some political background to the economic struggle in Washington. I had thought that the Republicans were simply being contrarian and negative but she indicates they had some real reasons for not simply supporting the stimulus plan. Fred Mishkin provided insight into the global dimensions, indicating that any takeover of the banks must not involve the government making kinds of banking decisions it does know how to make. The man of the Crisis, Roubini was as usual crisp, clear, condensed and authoritative. He said the Government's foreclosure plan is a good first step, but that the situation requires writing down the face value of mortgages. He spoke about the need to 'frontload' more of the stimulus money. He also believes that a temporary government takeover of the banking system is necessary. He also pointed out that the United States however much the leader will not help from others in the world if there is to be a global turnaround. He speaks about our being in the U- shaped recession with the chances of having increased of the dreaded L- shaped, ten year loss of growth.

Even Roubini does not seem to have a clear and simple way out of this. He also points out that the massive government spending will be a problem , later on and that there is no ' free lunch'.

One wonders how it is possible that all these grown- ups who supposedly knew what they were doing, did not. There is also the sense despite Mark Zandi's optimism that the situation may be even worse than Roubini is now forecasting.

The world seems to need a few Doctor Sunshines who have ideas about how to get us out of it. If they appear I am sure Charlie Rose will have them on his show.

REMant  02/19/2009 10:14 PM Report

Summers should know better. Ppl ARE NOT poorer if prices go down. Ppl ARE poorer only when utility declines. When investment was made in houses whose value consists mostly in the possession of them, and whose real utility is slight, our nation became poorer by that act, NOT because of any deflationary cycle, which has reduced the price of them. Foreclosure is bad, but it is so, because it shifts wealth from the less wealthy to the more wealthy, and in so doing, since it eliminates whatever productive use there was in houses, it ends up making the wealthy poorer also. We don't want more money, because money is debt, or takes its value for the demand it represents; we want more product. That in a nutshell is the difference between Keynesian/mercantilist and classical/free-trade economics. There is in Keynesianism and mercantilism not only the idea of possessive wealth, but also an antinomian, enthusiastic belief in progress and credit as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Whatever ppl do is what God has willed and thus infinite credit is justified.

I do not think we want the govt to be owning empty houses anymore than bad debts. This is simply unfair to the vast majority of Americans, and govt management of property historically leaves a lot to be desired, as well. What we want is for debtors and creditors across the board to come to some agreement about refinance. The stick we have for getting them to do that is that the longer they wait, the poorer, undoubtedly, they will get.

The failure to bail out Lehman didn't start this crisis, nor did the mortgages, by themselves. It was the lack of productivity to sustain the level of credit, esp because the latter was pyramided. There was nothing new about this chain of events. It had happened dozens of times before, tho only rarely with such abandon, as in Japan in the late 80's and early 90's and here in the 1920's. Trying to insure ourselves against loss in this kind of situation was a piece of utter stupidity, as well, but otherwise of no real consequence except to insure that the losses were widely spread. We are not going to "kick start" or "jump start" anything because to do so would only mean restarting the same kind of inflation, and fortunately, that is no longer possible, short of hyperinflation.

I think it is fair to say that where the Bush admin was unwilling to bail out homeowners, etc., for moral reasons, the Democrats, by and large, have no such scruples, since they see it as buying votes. It is the simple bribery and corruption at which they have always excelled. If the Republicans wanted morality, they should have not spent so much in the first place, or urged the Fed to create more. This was a replay of the Johnson admin, and the Reagan admin, both of which wanted both guns and butter. The Obama admin seems to share that attitude, despite paying lip service to austerity and reform, but it probably is no longer possible, esp not if the holders of dollars stand up for their rights.

Our task now is to mitigate the harmful effects of unavoidable, but also necessary, deflation as best we can. Deflation is necessary to correct imbalances in value that impede change in productivity, much the same as the corrections necessary in trade balances or exchange rates.

I am not sure that taking over all the banks, cleaning them up, and then letting them continue to do the same things they have been doing for years, is a good idea, because their behavior and nothing else is the real cause of this situation, and I am happy to see fairly widespread agreement about this.

I also noticed that admin news releases now say they will create OR preserve x number of jobs. And the latter is what it is, mostly; not stimulus in the sense of multipliers, etc, but govt life support. There's only so much of this we can do, unless someone buys the debt it creates, or we get more in taxes.

We most certainly do NOT need any more demand, and it gets my back up to hear Keynesians like Summers saying that. We have way too much demand now. What we haven't got is the real money to support that demand, and what we do have is being concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. This is multiplier talk. If the multiplier worked, then buying houses could never have caused a problem in the first place. Our real task is not to recapitalize banks, but to recapitalize the country, itself. You cannot do that by lowering interest rates and borrowing money.

I thought overall tho that this was the best discussion on this subject I've heard for some time, and I was beginning to get worried by all the hype since the inauguration. Some of that talk, I realize, is supposed to be upbeat, but this is surely not a situation that can be overcome by jawboning.

tartufe  02/19/2009 10:06 PM Report

It will be obvious from this diatribe that I am a very cynical and disbelieving individual when it comes to the credulity of the financial industry and the politicians they deal with. The resulting complicity / duplicity is an unfair, inequitable combination an ordinary citizen cannot function in.

To this end I’ll state up front what many will deem to be off-the-wall, to wit: Henry Paulson (complicit with others of course) pulled off the biggest heist in history and should be tried for fraud and even treason. He was more damaging than Osama bin Laden. Bernanke, Bush et al obviously are culpable along with so many other venal whores (political and private) that it’s banal to try to list them all. However, the CEOs of say the top say 50 banks would have to make the cut. Honorable mention has to go to Obama’s campaign contributors starting with Robert Rubin, Citigroup and his sidekick and Obama’s advisor Larry Summers, starred here.

Obama’s presidency will fail on two counts: his burdening us all (and our progeny) with bank bailouts and his-adopted-war, Pakistan-Afghanistan.

I dispute the basic premise of the Frontline 2/17/2009 “Inside the Meltdown.” My cynicism shouts that the real intent of the bill was the (me-thinks-they-protest-too-much) bailout of their lifetime banking cohorts, more than the easing of toxic mortgages. Complicit government-banking collusion too long established (a la predatory credit card legislation over the years) to believe that relationship had suddenly ceased.

Honest balance sheets of the largest NY headquartered banks wwill doubtless be burdened with Credit Default Swap (CDS) insurance a la AIG. Geithner, Summers, Bernanke will ill-advise the bought-and-paid-in-full Obama that massive infusions into the big banks is critical to prevent a total economic collapse.

Trying to override the laissez faire free-market capitalism rules is akin to trying to override the laws of nature. The dues must be paid. By whom is the question Bernanke, Paulson et al are trying to evade or rather subvert. Unfortunately from their predatory cohorts to our progeny.

Analogous to a body with gangrenous maggots on its rump that needs excising. Say an area covering one per cent of the body. The maggots devour each other (a la big banks) when not fed fresh blood from the host body. At 300 million population if one per cent is more than a fair allotment for the nations largest banks predators, that would put the number at an over generous 3.0 million. It’s a safe bet that the sub-prime predators are also big credit card exploiters. Hedge funds with their highly leveraged packaging of various junk and credit default swaps doubtless crow-barred the chaos even more.

The point seems to me that the 99 per cent of the population is being sacrificed for the sake of 1.0 per cent that caused the chaos to begin with. The tentative bailouts to date have failed. Test enough. Time to start at the other end. Besides, WHY SAVE THE MAGGOTS?

Percolate up, not trickle down. They’re blandly throwing around trillions now. Two trillion is nearly $7000 per capita, or nearly $20,000 per household. Home down payment? Car? Trinkets? Economy primers?

Granted letting the big banks fail would cause dislocations, but they look like they are due anyway. The natural laws of economics wants their pound of flesh from somewhere. It should come from where it’s most equitable redemption can be exacted - namely the big predatory and credit card banks. A new system will evolve. Excising the maggots will assure a healthier body free of moral hazards.

Debauching the currency with printing presses could ultimately reduce it to a new fiat altogether. Save your confederate currency. The next currency will have real idols this time. Personas we revere, like Madonna and Paris Hilton, to match our real values.

doodahdaze  02/19/2009 06:52 PM Report

Once again, Count Dracula is the most focused and direct of the group. President Obama would be wise to seek his council.

He saw the this perfect storm coming before everybody; including Paulson, Bernanke, and Geitner, assuming the Frontline program I saw a couple nights ago is truthful AND accurate.