In July 2012, the LIBOR manipulation scandal broke wide and before Congress then-Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke used it to cleverly cover up for his crisis actions (more so inactions). He told the Senate Banking Committee that the LIBOR system was “structurally flawed” before intimating it had been that way for some time. Asked if the rates calculated by the [...]
Ben Bernanke, then Chairman of the Federal Reserve, told Congress in March 2007 that subprime was contained. He will rightfully be remembered in infamy for that, but that wasn’t the most egregious example of being wrong. Even putting it in those terms risks understating the problem and why it stubbornly lingers. Being really wrong is claiming that IOER will establish [...]
When Bear Stearns nearly failed, made to merge, in March 2008 it wasn’t really a surprise. Yes, markets were shocked by the demise of the ancient firm, one of the bulge bracket cartel which suggested surprise over the severity of it more than that things were going bad. For more than a year, starting in early 2007, Bear had been [...]
If “investors” have notoriously short attention spans, then surely those in and of Europe are making a case to be classified as something entirely new, different, and worse. It is now just one day shy of six months ago that the latest central bank schematic was unleashed to the universal cheer of “markets” and economists alike. The ECB wasn’t fooling [...]
Very much in-line with the stubborn and creative effort to convince you that the economy has healed, policymakers have taken to the notion of “resiliency” as they seek to exit the QE business once again. Janet Yellen seems to work that adjective into every speech she gives, as if the power of her voice were enough to simply make it [...]
The ECB is widely expected to cut rates again tomorrow, and may include a program to “encourage” securitization of loans to small and medium businesses (SME). For now, the idea is to reduce the “drag” on Europe’s purported recovery, as, once again, the central banking regime turns to debt as the one and only solution. As I noted last week, [...]
It was just over a year ago that the ECB began courting rumors about an ABS addition to its monetary toolkit. With the obvious lack of credit flowing in the real economy flying directly in the face of all monetary convention and expectations, you can understand the desire to dust off the idea. Just over a week before the ECB’s [...]
First ECB head Mario Draghi hinted at discussions of an ABS plan at his press conference. Now we get word from Die Welt that not only is it more than a rumor, it has been discussed by the ECB’s governing council. The German paper also notes that it seems likely that the governing council is far more in favor than [...]
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