EconTech

DeLong adds to and neatly summarizes Thoma’s cleanup:
Thoma vs. Mankiw on Opt-Out Financial Regulation

I score this one for Mark Thoma. Mark Thoma is… puzzled, I think is the word… by Greg Mankiw’s claim that there is something intellectually wrong with Austan Goolsbee’s endorsement of the idea that there should be “enhanced regulation of any financial [...]

I saw this in my FT feed:
Moody’s awarded incorrect triple-A ratings to billions of dollars worth of a type of complex debt product due to a bug in its computer models, a Financial Times investigation has discovered.
Internal Moody’s documents seen by the FT show that some senior staff within the credit agency knew early in [...]

This was hilarious “If there’s one thing President Bush taught me (and there is only one thing he taught me), it’s that a federal executive has the authority to expand his own authority.” It’d be even funnier if it wasn’t terribly depressing. From the following post:
First Greenspan criticizes my efforts to clean up the subprime [...]

Not that that is exactly new news. But I haven’t heard it coming from Volcker before:
Volcker’s priors

The Economist features (and only mildly disagrees with) my piece with Arvind Subramanian on financial globalization this week.  Did I mention that I find them quite agreeable these days…
Coincidentally, I made a presentation on the same topic at a [...]

I’m just wondering who has less credibility at this point, the IMF and their bungling of the last major global financial crisis (’97) or the Bush administration and <insert list here>. FT reports a little bit of this skirmish over credibility:

IMF rejects criticism over global turmoil
By Chris Bryant in Washington and George Parker in London
[...]

PK wonders:
The North Atlantic conspiracy

Is Iceland the victim of a financial conspiracy?
Such things really do happen. During the 1997-1998 financial crisis there was, almost certainly, a financial conspiracy against Hong Kong. According to the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, several major hedge funds engaged in a “double play”, shorting both the city-state’s stock market and its [...]

“Bush’s Market-Liberal Scam”

This is from the Ludwig von Mises Institute. They are pleased Bush wasn’t able to get his Social Security plan implemented because it would have undermined free market capitalism:
Bush’s Market-Liberal Scam, by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.: President Bush began his second term with a big push for “Social Security [...]

Comments by Martin Wolf:
 
Nationalising Northern Rock was the right move

Nationalising Northern Rock was the right decision. It should have happened months ago. As soon as it became evident that the stricken bank could only survive with generous public sector guarantees, any so-called “private sector solution” was a mirage. This has finally become evident to the [...]

Argentina’s inflation numbers are looking cooked, if not burnt. Hopefully the real figures aren’t too bad.
 
IMF asks Argentina to clarify inflation figures
By Jude Webber in Buenos Aires
Published: February 11 2008 21:31 | Last updated: February 11 2008 21:31
The International Monetary Fund has asked Argentina’s statistical institute, Indec, to clarify inflation data and methodology that has [...]