“Zapatero is not a good driver. It’s like a boat, which in calm waters steers fine, but when it gets bumpy, they are not prepared.” The same could be said for many of the world’s C-level leaders, so it’s perhaps not surprising that both companies and countries are finding out the hard way that credit can dry up when the sea gets choppy…

As rare proof that not all ex-Goldman bankers are great vampire squids wrapped around the face of humanity, Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney turns his gaze toward households as the holidays approach with some keen macro observations and their implications for micro decision-making. Though the central bank recently raised flags about Canadian household finances and talk of a real estate bubble has begun to resurface, this public address seems measured both in its observations and its conclusions, and reflects well on the current poster child of responsible 21st century monetary governance…

Commentators often question how recent events in global capital markets could possibly sneak up on the world’s leading economists and policymakers. One possible explanation begins with the premise that the average citizen is reasonably unaware of even the most basic financial and economic concepts – like fractional reserve banking and the time value of money. As a result, generations of otherwise sophisticated individuals have grown up trusting that our economic plumbing and the individuals who manage it are fundamentally sound.

The latest in a long series of articles on the Rational Post sharing a common refrain: those who forget economic history are condemned to repeat it…

Originative sin: the future of banking

By John Plender at FT.com, January 4 2009

For the late John Kenneth Galbraith, an acute observer of market folly, finance and innovation were fundamentally incompatible. Every new financial instrument, he said, “is, without exception, a small variation on an established design, one that owes its distinctive character to the … brevity of financial memory”. The world of finance “hails the invention of the wheel over and over again, often in a slightly more unstable version”.

This brief history of regal extortion draws some parallels to today’s “sinister” Federal Reserve, though the links are less tenuous than Dr. Hoye and others often suggest…

Over-the-counter gambling on the markets has been around much longer than modern derivatives pundits would have you believe. The New York Times was warning against “casino capitalism” as early as 1905, when side bets on market movements were both commonplace and unregulated, and won the attention of an American government still swaggering after its victory over the mega-trust companies of the late 19th century. The following 60 Minutes segment discusses both the nature of CDS instruments and how they’ve become just as dangerous today as they were in the “bucket rooms” or gambling houses of the 1920s…

Currently the envy of Hank Paulson and virtually every Finance Minister around the globe, Jim Flaherty describes how the world’s leading middle-power managed to side-step most of the financial devastation that’s haunting global financial markets, and what the world can learn from its sure-footed path…

We’ll probably never know how close we came to systemic financial collapse this March, but if anyone had any idea about the scale and scope of the global credit crisis, it was this ragtag collection of Wall Street rainmakers who gathered by phone last Sunday to rescue the world…

In this recent Times OpEd, Rochester economics professor Steve Landsburg points out how easily John Q. Public overlooks cause and effect in 21st century markets.

Let’s review: 1) goods and services require labor and capital to produce; 2) the price of labor and capital impact an item’s ultimate price; 3) factors of production are much less expensive in the developing world; 4) a decades-long public war on inflation in the developed world has prevented the price of goods from increasing in step with wages; however, 5) wage growth is now slowing and inflation has reached a 17-year high; thus 6)…

Spending taxpayers money on a massive military offensive has its own unique economic consequences, but borrowing money from abroad to finance sustained hostilities half-way around the world places the American executive in a vulnerable position vis-a-vis the international community. This moderated conversation, featuring Robert Hormats — currently Vice Chairman at Goldman Sachs International and a former Assistant Secretary of State, member of the National Security Council, and US Trade Ambassador — touches on the myriad economic and political challenges that emerge when war is funded by outsiders while policy projects from within…

November 23, 2006—More dour news about the coming financial apocalypse, this time by noted economic strategist Dr. Gary Shilling. The augur, once again, is a hyper-inflated housing market, driven principally by excessive leverage, scandalous consumer spending, and inexhaustible financial optimism. “And why not?” you might ask. Everyone and their uncle has made money in real estate over the past five years, from the slummiest crack house to the most decadent penthouse. The more money everyone has, the more money everyone spends, and most developed economies have profited handsomely from that arrangement.

To get a sense of why the experts are now tempering such myopic enthusiasm, and why these so-called “speculative episodes” are inherently not in the economy’s best…

Morgan Stanley’s chief global economist adds his voice to the growing choir of doomsayers, predicting heartbreak for employees and consumers throughout the high-cost, developed world. His thesis is simple: growth in the world economy has come not from soaring wages but from bubbalicious home prices, soaring corporate profits, American consumerism and low-cost third-world labour. As jobs continue to stream offshore and the markets pray for a “soft landing”, recession may be the only tune this chorus is willing to sing…

“I can calculate the movement of the stars, but NOT the madness of men.”
- Sir Isaac Newton, after losing a fortune (£20,000) in the South Sea bubble.

I’ve been meaning to write about the impending real estate crash for quite some time, but until I get around to it, this piece is worth a read. Roubini is a Professor of Economics at the Stern School of Business at New York University, and the work below is taken from his blog. Though the prose is somewhat awkward, anyone who produces “seminal work in international macroeconomics, global macro policies, financial crises in emerging markets and their resolution, and the reform of…

as a primer on basic investment analysis and the ongoing challenge of balancing risk and reward, this email exchange tries to demystify the increasingly lucritive but often frigtening world of “structured finance”. caveat investor…

From: [a good friend]
Sent: December 20, 2005 9:56 AM
To: [me]
Subject: Can you please look at this prospectus?

My father is interested in this but thinks it may be too good to be true. What is your opinion?

From: [me]
Sent: December 20, 2005 11:14 AM
To: [a good friend]
Subject: RE: Can you please look at this prospectus?

it’s called “structured finance”, and it happens all the time. think of the income trust as a really…