Some Clear Thinking on the Financial Mess from Norris and Krugman
Filed under: Bailout Bill, Barack Obama, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Recession, U.S. Economy, U.S. Financial Crisis
I read both of these columns in last Friday’s edition of the New York Times. It’s the end of a historic year for the U.S. economy. We may look back in a few years and say that 2008 was the beginning of the end for supply-side economics (trickle down) and a nearly wholly unregulated financial services system. 2008 will hopefully become known as the time when ordinary people got concerned enough about the price they were paying for the excesses of banks which traded stocks, brokerages which sold insurance and insurance companies which did both. 2008 was a year when ordinary folks began to understand mortgage backed securities and credit default swaps – and what the failure of those derivatives meant for their local widget makers’ line of credit.
If you don’t read anything else today, read these two columns:
- Op-Ed, Floyd Norris: A year of financial contradictions and chaos - New York Times
- Op-Ed, Paul Krugman: The Madoff Economy – The New York Times
