Tim Worstall

Michel Barnier, the European commissioner in charge of financial market regulation, said he would propose controls to curb speculative trading in credit default swaps, (CDS) a form of debt insurance that has been blamed for worsening Greece’s economic problems.
His measures will target so-called naked [...]

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R. Murphy Esq:
Brussels’ logic is that by betting against the euro, hedge funds are driving its value down, so making it harder for hard-pressed states like Greece to balance their books, as the market is demanding. This then creates a vicious cycle of more government spending cuts being required in Greece, [...]

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I rather said this over here.
Originally written for a conference of the Federal Reserve, Gary Gorton’s “The Panic of 2007″ garnered enormous attention and is considered by many to be the most convincing take on the recent economic meltdown. Now, in Slapped by the Invisible Hand , Gorton builds upon this [...]

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Hector Sants, chief executive of the Financial Services Authority, has called time on the era of “light-touch” or “principles-based” regulation and said that a new “outcomes-based” approach was needed in the wake of a financial crisis that many blame on the previous [...]

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So, Lehman’s is spiralling the plug hole and various people are trying to get various politicians to intervene:
During the bank’s final hours in September 2008, Fuld tried desperately to strike a rescue deal with Barclays but the FSA would not allow the British bank an exemption from seeking time-consuming shareholder approval. The [...]

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Of course, Sachs would support absolutely anything that raised more money for development. But he does at least point to the correct question:
incidence of the tax
It won’t be the banks and bankers (no, no matter what Ritchie says, it won’t be) who carry the costs. It will be all users of financial markets. That is, [...]

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The European commission announced moves today to shore up the euro and ward off market pressure on Greece by considering a ban on complex derivatives allegedly being used to undermine the single currency.
The draconian move suggested by José Manuel Barroso, commission president, follows a joint campaign by the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the French [...]

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And I’m amazed that The Guardian of all places publishes it:
Politicians and the media continue to refer to the economic downturn as being the result of a financial crisis. This is wrong. We have 15 million people out of work because the housing bubble that drove the economy since the last recession [...]

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Um, isn’t this man supposed to know something about finance and the City?
creating common rules on the trading of toxic credit default swaps.
Toxic? CDSs?
What is he on about? Around and about the only credit market that remained open and liquid during the crisis is “toxic”? The market in which hedge funds in the last few [...]

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God it’s good to see someone writing this sort of stuff.
Hedge funds are currently boosting the prices of Greek government bonds as they close out old CDS contracts.
Not, as many screaming ignorantly are saying, lowering prices by speculating against the bonds.

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So Greece, take a leaf from the book of Clever Trevor. Do the honourable thing. Take your lumps and stop giving out about the smirk on the face of the executioner.

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Here’s the bit that people aren’t concentrating on:
Hester insisted RBS needed to pay bonuses to its investment bankers – who generated £5.7bn of an £8.3bn underlying profit
Yes, the bank as a whole made a loss. But the investment bankers seem to have made a very good profit. The losses came from the previous actions [...]

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Or, how crooks betray themselves.

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He’s OK today, as far as he goes, is Mr. Hutton:
But as the forecasters say, fortunately our plans to service the debt is within the margins of safety, never rising above 10% of tax revenues even at the peak moment for public debt in 2014/15. It started from a low base and interest rates are [...]

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Hutton really is such a statist that he cannot even make the correct distinction between ownership by hte State and ownership by citizens of that State.
Britain owns a fifth of Greek bonds.
Britain does? The State?
I can imagine that in our foreign exchange reserves held by the State there are a few Greek bonds. We do [...]

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Now I know that bankers aren’t the most loved of creatures at present but:
Barclays Capital has been forced to break contractual agreements with some of its star bankers after bowing to regulatory demands on bonus payments.
The investment banking arm of Britain’s third biggest bank on Friday set aside a [...]

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So, how do I go about setting up a little pressure group/think tank to argue the case against this Robin Hood Tax? It’s lunatic on the very face of it.
There are extremely strong arguments against it.
How do I organise a whip round of the banks and hedge funds (trivial amounts each: £10k, £20 k each [...]

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You know, looking at the list of supporters, there’s only one who even pretends to have any knowledge of economics.
That’s the new economics foundation.
It’s going to be a complete disaster, isn’t it?
Oh, here’s a lovely little point.
Although 0.05% is a tiny tax, $400 billion is a substantial amount.
That’s what they expect to raise (not the [...]

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There’s two ways this can go really.
1) The PIIGS are hung out to dry, they default or leave the euro and the European Project grinds to a halt for a generation or two.
2) Fiscal transfers start between rich and poor EU countries. In effect, we get the economic government of Europe as well as the [...]

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I’m happy to play my part in the great Robin Hood Tax
A tax on transactions could turn banks from the pantomime villains of the world economy into its dashing heroes, argues Bill Nighy.
Well, yes Bill.
But you’re a fucking actor. What in buggery do you know about economics? Or banking?
Nighy attended The John Fisher School, Purley, [...]

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