finance insurance
real estate F.I.R.E

shiller engages in a might be fantasy

instead of posing
the synthetic security as innovation

against

its potential for hazardous exploitation

by the endemic workings

of the real world's hi fi system

all that multipule gearing
fraudulent rating

pass the stinker

till it reaches some giff

without a nose or a clue

these are not innovations
these are business as usual

pouncing on a new con

they are the systemic exploitation
of a novelty

the fomentaion of a fad wave

fired ultimately not by the spirit of progress thru invention

but by a never fully acknowledged

even self acknowledged

fantasy quest for

a secret insider

perpetual rent rip system

as satan discoverd
all hot set ups

must end in brimstone

Posted by: op | Link to comment | March 26, 2008 at 06:11 AM

op says…
“The destruction of the Savings and Loans by Jake Garn and the Reagan-Bush folks was only a first round in a campaign of corruption and destruction, which has also included the reduction of the mutual form in insurance as well as banking”

i take it
that institutional destruction was not creative ???

to me it was

after all it wiped out
a piss poor fuss budgety

labor intensive

miss peach set up

now any rube can get a line without
farting around hat in hand

for several hours

across from some

super annuated sanctimonious

tie and coat dork

sitting behind

an open office side desk

who thinks saying “no”

to some stiff lookin to buy a hen coop

is like

praising our lord and maker

viva the new and dangerous
robo-credit system

Posted by: op | Link to comment | March 26, 2008 at 06:21 AM

op says…
the bruce be wild i love most

“A focus on the arcane jargon of “securitization” and derivatives should not be allowed to distract attention from the extent to which the present crisis has its foundation built on nothing more than an elaborate gambit to steal from and defraud home owners and would-be home buyers”

Posted by: op | Link to comment | March 26, 2008 at 06:22 AM

op says…
any reform, which doesn't include as its central feature some kind of registry/clearinghouse, observable by the central bank, ought to be a non-starter.

couldn't agree more

but it is the incentive to steal that both innovates these products
and craves …the darkness

lucifer oh lucifer
what have you rought

you rogue you

but err
the chracoaled steak was great

and

my hands and feet sure like

the perpetual heat

Posted by: op | Link to comment | March 26, 2008 at 06:26 AM

op says…
“Given the need for expertise”

that right there spans the gap between us bruce

i'm a red guard in these matters

Posted by: op | Link to comment | March 26, 2008 at 06:29 AM

op says…
robinia

balance is not the word
for what a people's uncle

would be up to

he'd have 13000 armed masked agents
raiding 100 trans nat hi fi's head quarters

each week

with plenty of

“we'll be back” 's

Posted by js paine at 10:08 PM

More and better Democrats.

bruce start defining
better Dembos

and you'll run yourself out

the left side of

the big donor hospitality tent

comes a time when the party isn't big enough for
both a prog agenda and heavy donors

notice hillary picks alan greenspan
and bondage bobby

for her blue ribbon A team

Posted by js paine at 10:07 PM

“This is not just a matter of simple justice… It is also a matter of efficiency”

ahhh wolfy invokes the OUR LORDS third commandment

thou shalt have no gods before me
saith

OUR LORD except ….. “EFFICIENCY ”

a matter of efficiency

risk taking regulation
at the synthetic security trading windows ???

i'd prefer
this gargoyle even :

” it's a matter

of periodic total output “

the credit system if it locks up
slows the out put rate of real products

thus the input rate (to real folks)

of …maybe even …the necessary

basic means of happiness

in plain english

its a matter of ” social welfare “

“Once upon a time, I had hoped that securitisation would shift a substantial part of the risk-bearing outside the regulated banking system, where governments would no longer need to intervene. That has proved a delusion”

one might wonder why that hope in the first place

increased risk baring “efficiency”
or increased

total risk load capacity

or closing the loop of risk

let the same ring of cuffs
take the gains and the loses

full rewards and full punishments

guess there's a compliance problem

when the risk takers agents
run the printing press

if today comes up heads in aggregate they win

but if it comes up tails in aggregate we lose

“If removing restrictions gets you in the vicinity of the competitive outcome “

” and most often it does”

that second bit ..in our second best of an economy ….

well it has a degree of generality

i'd avoid mark

the record shows
the belt way mecca

loves its pilgirm rent seekers

and a reg-web that catches most
but has a few well placed loop holes

for the inside trackers

is often more efficient

at squeezing out rent max

and narrow max

distributing it

don't most
post greenwald -stiglitz welfare models

suggest

its the class of regs

that prevail in the contest for

“specific orderings of specific markets”

that are pareto inferior

and not to no regs

but to another set

of possible regs

maybe regs just as class biased
but

that fall mostly on what now is the rent seeking and collecting class

by and for another class

of econ con agents

the present rent paying class

its a case of distributional efficiency

leading to a broader welfare enhancement
and a higher total welfare

fair ???

my fair is your outrage
in these matters

the carter glass “play”interview
is worse then

the john adams series now on hbo

like
tom hanks and

that old peckerhead with the hallowing voice

that gave us this pop tart adams

the author of this piece

is more disney then gibbon

…
“Free markets is not the point. Producing well-functioning, competitive markets is the goal, that's when our models say the outcome is optimal.”

i second that notion

or is it
i third it

…
kharris

i think you and mark agree completely

i read this passage of his

to say pretty much what you say

albeit more abstractly

the model out come optimized
in most run thrus

is “human welfare “

…
Paine would say, 'It's time to break the suffocating chains of capitalist bondage'

yes a would indeed

but to save it from itself
is the mission of the brightest and best…

elect-able pols

So who represents liberalism these days, Robert Rubin or Sherrod Brown?

we shall see ….
its a tussle for the soul of the dembot party

ps i'm not sure shoo fly brown's for real

at least
not in the strict sense

bondage bobby was is and will be

best outcome

a stake driven thru rubin's heart

aahh yes

but some one will pull it out
some day

and he'll visit us again

Posted by js paine at 10:04 PM

Phil Gramm
is all that's wrong with domestic amerika

made out of roting texas meat

Posted by js paine at 07:45 PM

halted and thrown into confusion by a general drop in prices. This confusion and stagnation paralyses the function of money as a medium of payment, whose development is geared to the development of capital and is based on those presupposed price relations. The chain of payment obligations due at specific dates is broken in a hundred places. The confusion is augmented by the attendant collapse of the credit system, which develops simultaneously with capital, and leads to violent and acute crises, to sudden and forcible depreciations, to the actual stagnation and disruption of the process of reproduction, and thus to a real falling off in reproduction.
Hence the peculiar phenomenon of economists who deny over-production of commodities, admitting over-production of capital. To say that there is no general over-production, but rather a disproportion within the various branches of production, is no more than to say that under capitalist production the proportionality of the individual branches of production springs as a continual process from disproportionality, because the cohesion of the aggregate production imposes itself as a blind law upon the agents of production, and not as a law which, being understood and hence controlled by their common mind, brings the productive process under their joint control

Posted by js paine at 07:41 PM

karl on crisis:

at some point in the cycle

the capitalist industrial production system
“… comes to a standstill

and

“…at a point fixed by the production

and realisation of profit,

and not the satisfaction of requirements”

“too many means of labour and necessities of life are produced…
to permit of their serving

as means for the exploitation of labourers

at a certain rate of profit.”

“Too many commodities are produced
to permit of a realisation

and conversion into new capital

of the value and surplus-value

contained in them

under the conditions of distribution and consumption

peculiar to capitalist production,

i.e., too many to permit of the consummation

of this process without constantly recurring explosions.”

at a certain rate of profit ….normal and sound

ie
one that keeps the firm in question above the red ink line

ie by a line
embedded in the firms vital function

like a poison pill box

full of
what sort of pills ???

obligations criss crossing thru a zillion balance sheets

ten zillion zillion specific owed tos and coming froms

the whole nominal paper mass weighing on the real system of production

karl:

“However, even under the extreme conditions

assumed by us

this absolute over-production of capital

is not absolute overproduction,

not absolute over-production

of means of production.

It is over-production of means of production

only in so far as the latter serve as capital,
and consequently include

a self-expansion of value,

must produce an additional value

in proportion to the increased mass.

Yet it would still be over-production,
because capital would be unable

to exploit labour to the degree required

by a “sound”, “normal” development

of the process of capitalist production,

to a degree which would at least

increase the mass of profit

along with the growing

mass of the employed capital;

to a degree which would, therefore,

prevent the rate of profit from falling

as much as the capital grows,

or even more rapidly.”

“Over-production of capital
is never anything more than

overproduction of means of production

— of means of labour and necessities of life —

which may serve as capital,

i.e., may serve to exploit labour

at a given degree of exploitation;

a fall in the intensity of exploitation

below a certain point, however,

calls forth disturbances, and stoppages

in the capitalist production process,

crises, and destruction of capital.

It is no contradiction
that this over-production of capital

is accompanied by more or less

considerable relative over-population.

The circumstances which increased

the productiveness of labour,

augmented the mass of produced commodities,

expanded markets,

accelerated accumulation of capital

both in terms of its mass and its value,

and lowered the rate of profit —

these same circumstances have also created,

and continuously create,

a relative overpopulation,

an over-population of labourers not employed by the surplus-capital owing to the low degree of exploitation at which alone they could be employed, or at least owing to the low rate of profit which they would yield at the given degree of exploitation.

If capital is sent abroad, this is not done because it absolutely could not be applied at home, but because it can be employed at a higher rate of profit in a foreign country. But such capital is absolute excess capital for the employed labouring population and for the home country in general. It exists as such alongside the relative over-population, and this is an illustration of how both of them exist side by side, and mutually influence one another.

On the other hand, a fall in the rate of profit connected with accumulation necessarily calls forth a competitive struggle. Compensation of a fall in the rate of profit by a rise in the mass of profit applies only to the total social capital and to the big, firmly placed capitalists. The new additional capital operating independently does not enjoy any such compensating conditions. It must still win them, and so it is that a fall in the rate of profit calls forth a competitive struggle among capitalists, not vice versa. To be sure, the competitive struggle is accompanied by a temporary rise in wages and a resultant further temporary fall of the rate of profit. The same occurs when there is an over-production of commodities, when markets are overstocked. Since the aim of capital is not to minister to certain wants, but to produce profit, and since it accomplishes this purpose by methods which adapt the mass of production to the scale of production, not vice versa, a rift must continually ensue between the limited dimensions of consumption under capitalism and a production which forever tends to exceed this immanent barrier. Furthermore, capital consists of commodities, and therefore over-production of capital implies over-production of commodities. Hence the peculiar phenomenon of economists who deny over-production of commodities, admitting over-production of capital. To say that there is no general over-production, but rather a disproportion within the various branches of production, is no more than to say that under capitalist production the proportionality of the individual branches of production springs as a continual process from disproportionality, because the cohesion of the aggregate production imposes itself as a blind law upon the agents of production, and not as a law which, being understood and hence controlled by their common mind, brings the productive process under their joint control. It amounts furthermore to demanding that countries in which capitalist production is not developed, should consume and produce at a rate which suits the countries with capitalist production. If it is said that over-production is only relative, this is quite correct; but the entire capitalist mode of production is only a relative one, whose barriers are not absolute. They are absolute only for this mode, i.e., on its basis. How could there otherwise be a shortage of demand for the very commodities which the mass of the people lack, and how would it be possible for this demand to be sought abroad, in foreign markets, to pay the labourers at home the average amount of necessities of life? This is possible only because in this specific capitalist interrelation the surplus-product assumes a form in which its owner cannot offer it for consumption, unless it first reconverts itself into capital for him. If it is finally said that the capitalists have only to exchange and consume their commodities among themselves, then the entire nature of the capitalist mode of production is lost sight of; and also forgotten is the fact that it is a matter of expanding the value of the capital, not consuming it. In short, all these objections to the obvious phenomena of over-production (phenomena which pay no heed to these objections) amount to the contention that the barriers of capitalist production are not barriers of production generally, and therefore not barriers of this specific, capitalist mode of production. The contradiction of the capitalist mode of production, however, lies precisely in its tendency towards an absolute development of the productive forces, which continually come into conflict with the specific conditions of production in which capital moves, and alone can move.

The rate of profit, i.e., the relative increment of capital, is above all important to all new offshoots of capital seeking to find an independent place for themselves. And as soon as formation of capital were to fall into the hands of a few established big capitals, for which the mass of profit compensates for the falling rate of profit, the vital flame of production would be altogether extinguished. It would die out. The rate of profit is the motive power of capitalist production. Things are produced only so long as they can be produced with a profit. …. Development of the productive forces of social labour is the historical task and justification of capital. This is just the way in which it unconsciously creates the material requirements of a higher mode of production…the stimulating principle of capitalist production, the fundamental premise and driving force of accumulation, … endangered by the development of production itself.
And here the quantitative proportion means everything. There is, indeed, something deeper behind it, of which he is only vaguely aware. It comes to the surface here in a purely economic way — i.e., from the bourgeois point of view, within the limitations of capitalist understanding, from the standpoint of capitalist production itself — that it has its barrier, that it is relative, that it is not an absolute, but only a historical mode of production corresponding to a definite limited epoch in the development of the material requirements of production.”

Posted by js paine at 07:15 PM

lm

notice how minor scanland is
even its own home grown trans nats

can behave themselves there and still make

much much golden straw elsewhere

scanland is the exception alibi ing the rule

Posted by js paine at 06:52 PM

rusty

”.. the use of tax policy to solve various social problems may not always be the best course of action”

i agree

its in many cases way too slow
at least operating alone

often costs can be passed thru for one thing

direct mandates with time frames and savage penalties gouged out of profits
lots and lots of circus maximus stuff

both on the ground and politically at the polls

the direct kick em in the balls approach
gets the limited liability mule's attention

in a way a slow tax bleed doesn't

Posted by: paine | Link to comment | March 25, 2008 at 08:07 AM

paine says…
anne stick to your guns

citing the pravda
of the trans nats

for me at least

will never settle

a factual dispute

in fact my guess we might want to

do a heavy carbon tax anyway

since it provides
“new sources of income for statists and a corrupt system”

i mean think of the pelf
we lounging pointy heads

can rake in

right off the suckerish backs

of 24/7/365

toiling corporate cuff linkers

Posted by: paine | Link to comment | March 25, 2008 at 08:16 AM

paine says…
“If Social engineering can be done through the use of the tax code then not using the tax code to do Social engineering is a form of Social engineering”

that is like saying

no hierarchy is another form of hierarchy

Posted by: paine | Link to comment | March 25, 2008 at 08:19 AM

paine says…
help me out here

how can a cap not work

unless its a cap in name only ???

a cap that slowly plunges down
oughta work

if the cost of non compliance
is set high enough

to exceed elastic tax cost or penalty

pass thru

set too low and limited in personal liability
the system onvce imposed can be lived with

okay

so portfolio market value is hit

but the market makes a one time value adjustment

to lower earning streams eh ??

lesson diversify

on the other hand
the threat of a full plant shut down

is the best action

and holding corporate officers

personally responsible

and to the full extent of their personal wealth

hari

“the projectiles now covering the horizon as you reach the other side is mostly these God knows how tall poles with their 24/7 windmills generating electrical power….”

what offends one pair of eyes

often pleases another

i happen to like the huge solitary windwill

we have hulking over ocean side hull mass

if joined by many like mills
i'd feel i was watching

the war of the worlds climactic moments

as the infrenal martian machines

having laid waste to late victorian england

clamber to the cliff edges of dover

Posted by: paine | Link to comment | March 25, 2008 at 08:58 AM

paine says…
bakho

sez it fastest

cafe olay

Posted by js paine at 06:51 PM

mark t :

“it will also be necessary to change the people interpreting and enforcing the rules, and that won't happen without a change in party in control of the executive branch. “

it won't happen till

the wall street aid and abetters

of both party affiliations

are targeted as such and for being so

get defeated for re election

chuck schummmmzster and max booogas beware

btw
barnie f u gotta get it on not just blow your horn

Posted by: paine | Link to comment | March 25, 2008 at 06:16 AM

paine says…
new laws and full enforcement

how is that hard to figure

with the courts constraining stayte actions
law over ride is needed

that the fed saw it rising

and could have prevented the lot bubble

is enough to establish “new people

with opposite aims are needed now in the control tower”

most dangerous thought train in thread

“Now that we know how the new products behave in a downturn, financial entities will adjust and not extend themselves as they've done in the past'

most familiar snot nosed
auto dumbdact

dabbler's reposte

“This thread was…. strangely satirical”

“I'm skeptical on principle
on the merits of regulation'

what principle ???

the uncle milty F chi- go inc
tyrolean freedom party

platform principle # 13 ???

“no corporate regs please
its bad for freedoms “

operating maxim
by those who have replaced

the iron curtain

with an iron meme

“let all limited liability
trans nats

romp free to the max

whilst a limbo gubmint

bends under

the Stigler stick”

any more tiresome

post soviet

no more stalinoid

straight jackets chitter

only gets to be like mideast chitter

from a zionist

source poisoned noise

Posted by: | Link to comment | March 25, 2008 at 07:00 AM

paine says…

figure of the day

“too much oversight-style regulation can prevent

the action of

the winds of creative destruction”

rusty has felt
just that very dark breeze

blow right

up his beloved industrial heartland's

hindquarters

some times third best
is better then no best at all

Posted by: paine | Link to comment | March 25, 2008 at 07:07 AM

paine says…
“Excess finance … capacity “

do you mean petty loan originators ???

too many sharks chasing
too few over board sailors

Posted by: paine | Link to comm
waldmann is …..out of the real action

with no first hand grasp of the succulence

of bi partisan belt way elect- ables

creating post new deal

free pilfer zones

he's a thoughtful ironic
contrary uber-brain

but in the last analysis
still nothing but

just another side walk super intendent

Posted by: paine | Link to comment | March 25, 2008 at 07:16 AM

paine says…
“The Fed ought not be the central authority nor the Treasury as their mandates are about protecting “financial stability” over protecting consumers/investors/savers”

i agree

but i'd rather see the congo harness its fednik creature
which since inception

has maintained vampires on the blood bank's board

the future people's fed i envision
among other august roles and practices

needs to be the job class majority's

mutt and jeff tribune

keeping a skunk eye

on the hi fi wally worlders

ever ready to facilitate

their forced return of seigniorage gains

and credit rationing rents

properly belonging to the people as a whole

mark

suggests the optimal policy path

follows the fairway

with hazards ” on both sides “

” too much intervention and too little “
both lead to a bad lie

often its hard to argue against such sweet reason

but here we are in the woods off to the too low reg side
and

i say lets just take a huge hack at the ball

even if we end up on the too high reg side

i suspect we'll end up

considerably closer to the hole

however

this side of the robinia moon

looks silvery cool to me

“What proactive action might a government take? I'm thinking a planning, market-shaping role is most appropriate (development-minded)”

Posted by: paine | Link to comment | March 25, 2008 at 07:50 AM

paine says…
“Markets only operate in the context of rules”

its corporations that need rules not markets

why do we reify the problem of wild corporate pokes
as a “market ” problem

its corporations
that make our contemporary advanced markets …right ??

make em brake em
and by doing so

often use

that market they've built sustained and hid thru

to milk we the weebles

and bilk us too ..

bilk us and each other and

all else

but god almighty

oh the shark ness of it all

in an otherwise world….

uncle sam would in turns
massage or foot stomp

not some figment called a market

but their makers
the trolls in 3k suits

up there in the glass towers

cynthia

it all starts with the lot value bubble
reg that eventuality out of possible market production

and the synthetic securities never hit default risks

like we see now

as to aaa ratings

those upstanding folks
need jail time

and financial ruin

and in each one's cell

they should find

waiting for em

a regulator who didn't do his job

alan greenspan needs serious jail time
above all others

talking about his personal philosophy
of a optimal market economy

is like talking about ditch schultz

philosphy of beer distibution

dd of course hits a bull's eye

these same
board room rats

will try to” make it “

just as much now the market

is “going south “

as they did

when it was ” coming north”

jail baby jail

personal finacial ruin and jail

for …10 thousand green souls at least

not another change to scoop up some more

reg/non reg produced rents

i wish engdahl had it right about
the last days of wall street rex

coming fast apon us

but no such ruck palefaces

pax wall street
like pax city of london

circa 1878

has at the very least
a few more decades

of uncontestable hegemony

ahead of it

i'll state it clearly as bad as it gets
this will not be

great dep II

that requires a globe without

a hi fi hegemon

and the hi fi hegemon of today
with its

one of a kind

anywhere it wants to go

death star/ blitz machine

hasn't yet met its near match

let alone

seen its great war

Posted by: paine | Link to comment | March 25, 2008 at 09:40 AM

paine says…
winny's lasso

castration of the hi fi bull

i'm dizzy from the vivid figure
i see the bull on the lasso

circling the cart as the lasso er in chief pivots round and round
meanwhile …

the cart goeth no where

Posted by js paine at 06:43 PM

“As the rich grew wealthier,
they invested growing amounts

in hedge funds

that pursue risky strategies

to earn annual returns

that ware far higher

than those available

from ordinary investments… “

why blame this on reagan or carter for that matter
this bipartisan drive to incresae returns may manifest itself in a thousand disguises

enough in fact to fool even the vigilant

even unto one's own actions and aims

to look at the peel off regs
on old “civilized sectors “of hi fi

as the fronteer of hi fi boomed

robert 'bud 'rubin and his dereganomics ??

looks like cowboys on wall street
aren't alonre gents can play at this too

eh ??

what can you expect

call it TR rough riding
the genteeel tradition in muscular creative destruction

the graceful anne of green pastures
her self may after a long stare into the mirror

admit she has at least a side saddle mount

in that hunt

Posted by pinky at 04:20 PM

i always make sure my action plan

— my minimum plan —-

exceeds any possible maximum plan

but i have a deeper sense
of why this production system is headed for eventual

sublation

consider the credit web
as a terminator

sent back

from the next stage of human social organization

to step by stage

torment and transmute

the present corporate llc

capitalist system

into its opposite

an alien anti system within the system

ultimately

anti the whole basis of commodity production itself

and spontaneously developing itself

right out of the head of capitalism itself

at once its apotheosis and nemesis

kinda hegelly ..eh

Posted by pinky at 04:15 PM