the finance industry / wall street

Anyway my gripe about that line ("why haven't these guys gone to jail?") is that actionable criminal fraud makes up a tiny portion of what went wrong with our economy, and while it is often metaphorically accurate to say "these guys are crooks", it's rarely literally provably true. Further, it seems to me that the lust for a public hanging kind of distracts from the much bigger, harder systemic problems that need addressing.
--Scott, bass player for Tenth Avenue North (Hurting 2)

Seriously JAIL THE BANKSTERS makes me want to throw myself off a bridge.

i don't even know where to put this:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-17/dental-abuse-seen-driven-by-private-equity-investments.html

almost too fucked up to comprehend

with each passing day I am more and more 'lol capitalism' (but also sad)

kind of lol but mostly smash

i know it for true that plenty of med mal lawyers really don't like to sue dentists, though medicare/medicaid fraud is beyond the scope of private lawsuits.

if i had a kid, who came home from school one day with a bunch of dental work i didn't know anything about, somebody would be taking a bat to the head by the end of that day

that story gives me freaky marathon man vibes.

Ok so I know this isn't EXACTLY within the thread, but since this has kind of become the smart-people-explain-finance-related-stuff thread, can anyone explain a bit about what a Greece Euro exit would mean?

This is one of the more provocative scenarios I've read for a Greek Euro exit:

http://brontecapital.blogspot.com/2011/09/models-for-greek-sovereign-default.html

wait i popped in here because the ows thread was getting too ideological for my taste but did somebody seriously just advocate for nationalizing investment banks?!?

nobody really knows what a greece euro exit would mean or how it would happen at the moment, i suspect. The new 'geuro' proposal (http://www.cnbc.com/id/47505085) strikes me as not completely insane and unworkable as a medium term solution that would probably just be a step towards ultimate euro exit.

can anyone explain a bit about what a Greece Euro exit would mean?

― this guy's a gangsta? his real name's mittens. (Hurting 2), Wednesday, May 23, 2012 10:22 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

most likely the end of the euro and the world

http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/05/21/fear_contagion.html

pretty good BBC Radio4 Analysis from February about what contingency plans might be put in place and how things might shake down if there's a Euro exit: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01bwm1h

I don't find Yglesias on finance very convincing, somehow.

What you're hearing lately from the Powers That Be about the survivability of Greece leaving the eurozone is all about liquidity contagion. They're saying that balance sheets are arranged such that the direct financial losses are survivable. But what about fear? It's harder to assess, but anyone who's sanguine about this is either bluffing optimistically or deluded. Ground zero for fear is going to be Cyprus. Most people probably don't even know that Cyprus is an independent country at all, and if they do know anything about it what they know is that it's some kind of ethnic Greek proxy state. So if Greece is gone, so is Cyprus, which is basically part of Greece. And if one island is gone, then what about Malta? So Malta's down. Now Cyprus and Malta matter even less than Greece. But once the policy rule isn't "Greece is different" but "Greece and Malta and Cyprus are all different" then who really knows. Does anyone even know anything about Portugal? Again, not really. Except it's close to Spain! And so now Spain's melting down. Not because of losses on Greek debt, but because the Greek exit and subsequent collapse of Cyprus have us new information about the limits of the German political class' level of commitment to the eurozone and now everyone's alarmed.

The only way to halt the pattern is to provide some very clear and very salient informational point separating the countries that are exiting from the countries that aren't exiting. And that's hard to do.

Like this. Not very convincing. Whose fear are we talking about? The American public? The German public? Institutional bond investors?

I mean there actually are, like, giant financial institutions who DO know something about Portugal besides it being next to Spain.

sure just like the giant financial institutions knew abt greece

but if you were to make list of people whos fear matters the most in this situation it would prob start with

1 people who have euros in greek/italian/portuguese/etc banks

then i guess

2 the people loaning money to those banks

actually I think it would be holders of sovereign debt of those countries

yes thats number 2

but people moving their euros from greek etc banks to german banks is necessary to get the ball rolling

holders of sovereign debt = people loaning money to the countries themselves

people = big institutions, mostly

corporation are people my friend

holders of sovereign debt = people loaning money to the countries themselves

― this guy's a gangsta? his real name's mittens. (Hurting 2), Wednesday, May 23, 2012 6:34 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol rilly thx cool tip

another term for these people at this point would be 'germany'

well, to recap, you said:

but if you were to make list of people whos fear matters the most in this situation it would prob start with

1 people who have euros in greek/italian/portuguese/etc banks

― lag∞n, Wednesday, May 23, 2012 6:29 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

then i guess

2 the people loaning money to those banks

― lag∞n, Wednesday, May 23, 2012 6:30 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

And then I said "holders of sovereign debt"

And then you said "yes thats number 2"

And then I said "holders of sovereign debt = people loaning money to the countries themselves"

which is not the same thing at all as people loaning money to some greek banks that have euros in them, or whatever.

Also I don't think Germany is a major holder of Greek sovereign debt, it just doesn't want to help bail out Greece.

as we saw in the american finical crisis the line between government and banks can become p abstract, the same thing has been going on for a while in the eurozone, germany et al is pumping a bunch of money into the greek government/banks, the distinction is p academic at this point

germany may not want to help bail greece out but thats exactly what its doing, uncertainty as to whether they will keep doing it is whats causing the fear which is resulting in the charmingly named 'bank jog' of euros flowing out of at risk nations banks to more robust ones

god the euro is such a piece of shit

this is an aside but i think france has 3-4x as much exposure to greek debt as germany

exposure to grek debt isnt really the issue because greece isnt really a v big economy, the issue is if the eurozone lets greece default then people start to wonder if theyll let italy and spain default too, which are obvs much larger/dangerouser economies

I guess I thought, though, that Germany's concern is that it DOESN'T especially want to be a part of the saving of those countries, i.e. Germany's fear isn't "don't let them default" it's "don't force me to help rescue them."

oh yeah germany has been actively rescuing greece for a while, and of course they dont want to, who wants to bail out these lousy greeks

basically for the euro to survive imho they have to change their charter so that theres an explicit pledge to bail out to the bitter end any failing member countries, just like massachusetts bails out mississippi every year, this if you take the logic far enough would kinda require europe to become one country

better tho i think would be to somehow peacefully unwind the euro if thats at all possible, because then i could afford to travel to spain and eat paella

anyway this stuff is all v fascinating and confusing and even really smart experts cant seem to agree, i hope it works out not terrible

but also w/cheap paella

its just a dumb idea to have countries not be able to control their own currency, what were they thinking

also like letting greece in w/o noticing that they were totally lying abt everyone and had really a sham economy

shoulda had an exit strategy, or tighter centralized controls. idea pretty great though.

i am sorry to interrupt the greek euro talk i don't understand but holy fuck goole's link about dental fraud!

ok the point i was getting at is that for all the german whining the french have put in about 3-4x as much bailout money as well

idea pretty great though.

― Fas Ro Duh (Gukbe), Wednesday, May 23, 2012 7:08 PM (2 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

idk if the idea was that great like what exactly is the big benefit

yeah it is weird that the french havent been whining more, its unlike them xp

this if you take the logic far enough would kinda require europe to become one country

which as I understand it was the whole point in the first place/was expected to happen as the next logical step but lol sovereignty and yes, paella.

If it had been done properly then a single currency and stronger, linked economies could have given Europe a chance to have more power against the dollar and the gargantuan US economy that basically everyone had to be subservient to for a while.

yeah i guess it just keeps coming back to linked economies really require linked governments