In a New York Times op-ed this morning, Paul Krugman dissects this week’s What Went Wrong hearings, specifically pointing out two blatant cases of “OMG did he really just say that”.
The first is Jamie Dimon‘s take on how normal it is to have a crisis every 5 years or so:
There were two moments in Wednesday’s hearing that stood out. One was when Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase declared that a financial crisis is something that “happens every five to seven years. We shouldn’t be surprised.” In short, stuff happens, and that’s just part of life.
But the truth is that the United States managed to avoid major financial crises for half a century after the Pecora hearings were held and Congress enacted major banking reforms. It was only after we forgot those lessons, and dismantled effective regulation, that our financial system went back to being dangerously unstable.
The other is Lloyd Blankfein on how the crisis was an act of god or nature, not at all created by man:
Still, Mr. Dimon’s cluelessness paled beside that of Goldman Sachs’s Lloyd Blankfein, who compared the financial crisis to a hurricane nobody could have predicted. Phil Angelides, the commission’s chairman, was not amused: The financial crisis, he declared, wasn’t an act of God; it resulted from “acts of men and women.”
Was Mr. Blankfein just inarticulate? No. He used the same metaphor in his prepared testimony in which he urged Congress not to push too hard for financial reform: “We should resist a response … that is solely designed around protecting us from the 100-year storm.” So this giant financial crisis was just a rare accident, a freak of nature, and we shouldn’t overreact.
Now of course, Krugman comes in and blames the crisis on the greed and leverage, which were symptomatic of the compensation structure disease itself. And he’s right, even if he is a partisan. People don’t lever up a company 33-to-1 unless they are getting paid a boat load more oif they do it than if they don’t do it (or if they’re just plain nuts).
[…]we prefer to honor lots of other net web sites on the internet, even if they arent linked to us, by linking to them. Underneath are some webpages worth checking out[…]
[…]we prefer to honor quite a few other web web pages around the net, even though they arent linked to us, by linking to them. Underneath are some webpages really worth checking out[…]
I’m a New York City-based financial advisor at Ritholtz Wealth Management LLC. I help people invest and manage portfolios for them. For disclosure information please see here.
Subscribe & Reform
Get a Full Investor Curriculum: Join The Book List
Every month you'll receive 3-4 book suggestions--chosen by hand from more than 1,000 books. You'll also receive an extensive curriculum (books, articles, papers, videos) in PDF form right away.
link building using social media
[…]Sites of interest we have a link to[…]
backlinks checker
[…]one of our guests just lately advised the following website[…]
polythene sheeting
[…]Sites of interest we’ve a link to[…]
link building king
[…]we prefer to honor lots of other net web sites on the internet, even if they arent linked to us, by linking to them. Underneath are some webpages worth checking out[…]
tack mats
[…]check below, are some absolutely unrelated sites to ours, having said that, they may be most trustworthy sources that we use[…]
Web Site
[…]here are some hyperlinks to websites that we link to for the reason that we feel they’re worth visiting[…]
check that
[…]Sites of interest we’ve a link to[…]
Get More Information
[…]Here is a great Blog You might Locate Interesting that we Encourage You[…]
review
[…]although web-sites we backlink to below are considerably not related to ours, we feel they’re essentially really worth a go by, so have a look[…]
pop over here
[…]that could be the finish of this report. Here you will discover some websites that we think you will appreciate, just click the links over[…]
find out this here
[…]we prefer to honor quite a few other web web pages around the net, even though they arent linked to us, by linking to them. Underneath are some webpages really worth checking out[…]
go to this web-site
[…]always a big fan of linking to bloggers that I really like but dont get a whole lot of link appreciate from[…]
click to read more
[…]Every once inside a although we pick blogs that we study. Listed below are the latest websites that we choose […]
have a peek at this web-site
[…]Every when inside a when we decide on blogs that we read. Listed beneath are the most up-to-date web pages that we pick out […]
kala jadu
[…]here are some hyperlinks to web pages that we link to since we feel they are really worth visiting[…]