Activity

The mortgage brokers probably spent all of their money. The mortgage-backed securities structurers maybe didn’t spend all of their money. But when you have an economy where contracts can be rewritten and you can go back and try to claw back money from people years after the fact, that’s going to be…

[...] Anybody who worked in sectors where there was a tremendous amount of activity where there shouldn’t have been. So we’re talking about housing. It means the Mexican guy who hammered together the house. It means the logger who cut down the wood that was used in the structural lumber. The guy wh…

[...] the way they think doesn’t admit of a world where Citibank gets nationalized. It’s just so inconceivable to them that they say, “You just can’t do that! It’ll cause all of these horrible problems.” Well, that was true when the economy was in an extremely unstable state and risk aversion was e…

preferring to restrict itself to a more wonted regulatory role

[...] some of the banks have come out and said that their business in January and February and March was profitable—Citi was the first to do it, Bank of America said so, Goldman actually reported this week. Personally, I think it’s a load of bollocks. I mean, as a bank, you have a lot of freedom to…