Lying sons of bitches

"Customers are not impacted and are paying the same ticket prices they were last week," ATA spokesman Steve Lott said.

LAST week Paul Ryan was spotted in a Washington restaurant drinking a couple of bottles of $350-a-bottle wine with two right-wing economic thinkers, later identified as John Cochrane, a professor at the University of Chicago and Cliff Asness, a hedge-fund manager. (Mr Ryan, to his credit, said his guests had ordered the wine, that he would never have ordered it had he known it was so expensive, and that he paid for one of the bottles himself when he found out.) Mr Asness is an amusing figure who in 2009 made a bid to personify Wall Street's pugnacious refusal to accept any responsibility whatsoever for having crashed the global economy, authoring an anti-Obama manifesto which he signed "Unafraid in Greenwich". I wouldn't be afraid of much either if I could buy $350 bottles of wine like they were cans of Coke.

Mr Cochrane, meanwhile, was among the earliest forceful advocates in 2009 of the argument that fiscal stimulus is essentially impossible, and that an increase in government would lead to runaway inflation. But at the end of his widely cited essay denouncing the concept of fiscal stimulus, Mr Cochrane emphasised that he wasn't saying the government should never borrow money or engage in deficit spending; it just has to meet certain conditions..

If it’s a good idea to build roads, then build roads. (But keep in mind the many roads to nowhere, and ask why fixing Chicago's potholes must come from Arizona's taxes funneled through Washington DC.) If it’s a good idea for the government to subsidize green technology investment, then do it. (But keep in mind that the internet did not spring from industrial policy to improve the Post Office, the word processor did not come from a public-private consortium to rescue the typewriter industry, and that a huge carbon tax is much more likely to spur useful green ideas, and the only way to spur conservation.) The government should borrow to finance worthy projects, whose rate of return is greater than projects the private sector would undertake with the same money, spreading the taxes that pay for them over many years, after making sure its existing spending meets the same cost-benefit tradeoff.

It would appear that Mr Cochrane's conditions for supporting deficit-funded infrastructure spending are currently being met. America has a $2 trillion backlog of infrastructure maintenance that must be undertaken sooner or later. And as Karl Smith explains, the yield on 5-year treasury inflation-protected bonds (TIPS) has been negative for months.

In other words, it would now literally be cheaper for the government to immediately borrow $3.5 billion in inflation-protected securities and take care of Pennsylvania's road and bridge maintenance backlog than it would be to wait five years and pay cash. The interest costs from borrowing the money will be lower than the inflation from waiting. This does not factor in the fact that if you fix the roads and bridges now, you get to use them five years earlier. Even assuming the value of fixing the pothole in your street tomorrow rather than five years from now is zero, which I think few drivers would agree with, it's cheaper at current expected inflation rates and bond yields to borrow the money and fix it now. It strains the imagination to believe that the private sector currently has better investment uses for the funds to be borrowed, as the private sector's current preferred use of saved funds is to...invest them in treasuries.

I wonder whether Messrs Ryan and Cochrane discussed Mr Cochrane's argument for deficit spending in cases where it clearly provides a high rate of return, or Mr Cochrane's equally interesting argument supporting a carbon tax.

semiretiredpunk said:

Otoki said:

Sad because it's true.

RudieCantFail said:
So, in case you missed it on The Daily Show, remember back in December when we agreed to extend the Bush tax-cuts for millionaires in exchange for getting things like the 9/11 responders health care bill passed?

Turns out it doesn't cover cancer, which is the chief concern for the people who sifted through burning, noxious building materials searching for our friends, countrymen, and loved ones.

Fuck everyone in congress. I'm so angry I could vomit.

In July, Issa sent a letter to top government regulators demanding that they back off and provide more justification for new margin requirements for financial firms dealing in derivatives. A standard practice on Capitol Hill is to end a letter to a government agency with contact information for the congressional staffer responsible for working on the issue for the committee. In most cases, the contact staffer is the one who actually writes such letters. With this in mind, it is important to note that the Issa letter ended with contact information for Peter Haller, a staffer hired this year to work for Issa on the Oversight Committee.

Issa’s demand to regulators is exactly what banks have been wishing for. Indeed, Goldman Sachs has spent millions this year trying to slow down the implementation of the new rules. In the letter, Issa explicitly mentions that the new derivative regulations might hurt brokers "such as Goldman Sachs."

Haller, as he is now known, went by the name Peter Simonyi until three years ago. Simonyi adopted his mother’s maiden name Haller in 2008 just as he was leaving Goldman Sachs as a vice president of the bank’s commodity compliance group. In a few short years, Haller went from being in charge of dealing with regulators for Goldman Sachs to working for Congress in a position where he made official demands from regulators overseeing his old firm.

"Large numbers of people who have ‘lost’ their house through foreclosure have actually realized a profit because they carried out refinancings earlier that gave them cash in excess of their cost," Buffett, chairman and chief executive officer of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK/A), said Feb. 25 in his annual letter. "In these cases, the evicted homeowner was the winner, and the victim was the lender."

BANK: Are these financial shenanigans yours?
FORMER HOMEOWNER: No, I--
BANK: Your realtor said she found it in your closet.
FORMER HOMEOWNER: I dunno, one of the guys must've--
BANK: Must have what?
FORMER HOMEOWNER: Look, bank, it's not mine, I--
BANK: Where did you get it? Answer me! Who taught you how to do this stuff?
FORMER HOMEOWNER: You, alright!? I learned it by watching you!

A magazine editor in Greece will appear in court after publishing the names of more than 2,000 wealthy Greeks alleged to have Swiss bank accounts, triggering a row over tax evasion that threatens the stability of the government.

Kostas Vaxevanis was arrested on Sunday, after his weekly journal, Hot Doc, printed the list of names, which including prominent members of Greece's political and business elite.

motorfirebox said:
Welcome back, thread! I've missed you.

Arguably not corporate lies and fuckery, but within a degree of separation: Greek reporter arrested for revealing tax evasion.

skeptik said:
So, what you're saying is that the Greece that Romney keeps warning us we'll become is the one that doesn't have enough revenue because the wealthy hide their assets to avoid paying their fair share of taxes?

Sounds like Mitt's warning is just in time.

Actually, I kind of thought he'd actually like that kind of country.

motorfirebox said:
Wow, this Kostas thing is getting serious fast. He's already going to trial. How fucked up is that? If he'd murdered someone they'd still be investigating, but embarrass the rich and you get bumped to the front of the fucking line.