And why the current planned regulation is almost guaranteed to be dismantled

Source: Colin Gregory Palmer

Although some might argue that the point is moot at this point, it appears that the broader financial analyst/reporter community has suddenly decided to adopt collective amnesia and paint financial regulation as the boogeyman that brought the financial industry to its knees. Of course, this is the same community that happily declared the beginning of a “new era” in investment and stocks during the tech boom (which busted), along with enthusiastically invented reasons why the real estate market could never go down even though it has gone both up and down throughout all of human financial history.

Overall, I suppose it shouldn’t come as that much of a surprise, given that track record and the relative ease that one can blame recent changes in the regulatory framework. Especially given that it comes with a very easily swallowed “us versus them” story of greed, corruption, and all those bad things. However, they’ve been wrong before, and I’m going to relatively confidently say they’re wrong again about the reason for the financial crisis—and why, ultimately, all of this hubbub about regulation, for better or worse, is mostly hot air. (more…)

Posted on October 4th, 2008
Filed under: Economics by James Wang

I apologize for the rather sparse posting at the moment. I’ve been in China for past few weeks (and will be for roughly the next two months) on an exchange program.

For at least the first part of the program, my internet access has been on-and-off, and for at least a period of time, dePolitik was blocked by the Chinese government firewall.

Given the limitations, I’ve decided to try to at least post short segments, if not the long articles I normally do, just to comment on the rapidly developing/devolving situation in the U.S. financial market.

Posted on October 4th, 2008
Filed under: Off-Beat by James Wang