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What really caused Japan's Lost Decade? | 54 comments (54 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)
Re: What really caused Japan's Lost Decade? (4.00 / 7)
The most ridiculous thing about the Villagers' take on the Lost Decade is that a generation of regulators in the US (Bernanke, but apparently from what you quote also Geithner) have spent their adult life lecturing everyone about all the mistakes the Japanese made to bring about the "Lost Decade" and then went on to make the same mistakes - same asset bubbles, same refusal to write down debt, same absurdly low interest rates throughout.

The brainless should not be in banking -- Willem Buiter
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Mar 23rd, 2010 at 04:53:24 AM EST
Re: What really caused Japan's Lost Decade? (4.00 / 10)
I don't understand why there's still no acceptance that these crises are engineered and inevitable - they're not something that 'just happens', they're what 'just happens' when you allow financial pirates to rob you by putting them in charge of the casino.

Greenspan, Geithner et al don't see their actions as mistakes, because they were never acting in the interests of the people whose lives have been ruined by them.

The Wall St plutocracy is a government within a government. It has no interest in the metrics that the rest of us live by, except to the extent that those metrics can be pressured and manipulated for the plutocracy's benefit.

NCE isn't just bollocks, it's kabuki - it's a public lie designed to protect and promote private privilege.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Tue Mar 23rd, 2010 at 11:30:04 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: What really caused Japan's Lost Decade? (4.00 / 3)
The amazing thing is the mendacity. Take the Greek complaint that while speculation has not caused the Greek debt problem, it aggravated it. The charge is that those who originated derivative contracts and sold them are now flipping to the long side and taking advantage of handsome interest rates on Greek bonds. There are charges of collusion and momentum plays in this market.

These charges are beaten back by people who point to a CDS index that shows the CDS market for Greece went from $20 billion to $80 billion in the last few months, and they explain that this $80 billion doesn't even cover 1/3rd of Greek debt, so that much of the debt is still uninsured.

But when you hear calls for transparency, for a clearing house to be developed so that these loans are not solely made in private, a hue and cry is hear. Why? Isn't the so-called CDS index that shows us how much has been bet on Greece, isn't it accurate? Why would you oppose something that effectively duplicates what this CDS index does?

The reason, I'm assuming, is that the CDS tracking may be tracking increases and volatility in the market, but it certainly isn't capturing the big picture as there are no regulations out there which force people to report their contracts to the indexes. There's a shadow market out there, so that any reporter who claims a negligible amount of insurance on Greek debt does not have the necessary information to actually make that claim.

by Upstate NY on Thu Mar 25th, 2010 at 10:11:48 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: What really caused Japan's Lost Decade? (none / 0)
The regulatory elite in Japan and U.S. apparently served/serve the same masters, their Wall Streets.

fairleft
by fairleft (fairleftatyahoodotcom) on Tue Mar 23rd, 2010 at 03:24:21 PM EST
[ Parent ]

What really caused Japan's Lost Decade? | 54 comments (54 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)
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