Month: December 2009
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The Sky Is Falling! Business Lending Down 1.2 Percent!
All hands on deck! Run for the exits! The Economist has just reported that lending to businesses in the euro area contracted by 1.2% from October of last year to October of this year. With that kind of catastrophic free-fall in lending, it’s not hard to understand why unemployment has gone up by 28% in…
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Investment Bankers are *Victims!*
Responding to a U.K. tax on bank bonuses: “This is extreme victimisation,†said one senior investment banker. “A lot of people have been working their tails off, never seeing their families to try and fix the problems of the past and now they are being discriminated against. It just makes me want to quit the…
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Volcker: “Give me one shred of neutral evidence that financial innovation has led to economic growth”
I pointed out recently that: From 2003 to 2008, the value of global over-the counter derivatives increased 300%–by a factor of four, while U.S. fixed capital (read: productive assets) increased by only 25%. Profits (or so-called profits) for U.S. financial companies have gone up 258% since Q4 2008, while profits for nonfinancials have gone up…