What People Are Writing
The Pensacola Beach Blogger covers Warren Buffett’s views of the situation.
Jim DeRosa looks at FDR’s solutions to the Great Depression.
DCap looks at the central issue to a lot of the turmoil, marked to market pricing. The WSJ had a primer on Federal Accounting Standard [FAS] 157 when it came out.
Anglachel highlights three articles in a New York Times series showing how we got here.
The bottom line is that when FAS 157 was enacted people had to start displaying some truth about their assets, and investors quickly realized that “things had been embellished”. They were embellished because no one was enforcing the rules that were in place, and others were attempting to eliminate all of the rules that were left.
Wall Street was put under rules as a result of the Great Depression because left on their own they were crooks. They are still crooks and should never be trusted. Greed subordinates common sense, and consequences are for “little people”.
2 comments
Yeah… but… Buffett likes Poulson! He’s a good friend! He says he’s a great Sec Treasury and cares about the people! 😐 🙁
I used to like Buffett. Hmmmm.
Well… I guess we wait and see what happens. *shrug*
If I were Buffett I would like Paulson. Buffett just made a lot of money from all of the messing around that Paulson has done, what’s not to like. The problem is that Buffett is probably assuming that Paulson will do something reasonable and sane, but the facts aren’t in evidence on that score. If Paulson uses the same procedure that Buffett used, then I would accept that Paulson knows what he’s doing.
If, OTOH, Paulson decide to buy up all of the “Level 3” junk investments the financial institutions are holding, which seemed to be part of an earlier plan, then Paulson has the intelligence of mold without the personality.