Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Nonsense. The economy's groundrules are determined by politics.

Not anymore. We gave that job to the market a long time ago.

Republican politicians care more about preserving their jobs than anything else.

Ok. Immortal suicide bombers.

OK -- let's have that conversation. Can we use technology to enter Keynes' post-work world? And what does that mean?

Not entirely post-work, but a 15 hr week. http://www.npr.org/2015/08/13/432122...as-he-so-wrong

My personal opinion is the Protestant Work Ethic is one of the most simultaneously diabolical and progressive concepts ever conceived. I still get creeped out in arguments with its advocates. You can cite them all the science, data, and logic in the world to prove they're toiling for the pointless, and all they can tell you is they know they're right. So many years of indoctrination... So frighteningly well developed and deeply driven into into their skulls. And over the very short term, they are right.

But then, over the long run, we are all dead.

Satan isn't the most compelling character since Milton's day without reason. He isn't loathed for his evil. He's loathed for telling the truth... that he doesn't exist, and nor does his divine opponent... And if time is all you have, foremost, to the cost of all other concerns which fall far, far below it -- have a good time.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Not anymore. We gave that job to the market a long time ago.

Some people think Trump, among others, is trying to take it back.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Matt Levine on what Cantor is buying:

Speaking of important people, why is Cantor Fitzgerald LP paying Barack Obama $400,000 to speak at its health care conference? The obvious answer is that Obama is a huge popular celebrity and an excellent speaker who will attract and impress clients at the conference, but that answer is so obvious that people seem to want to read a corrupt motive into it. Paying a former president a six-figure fee for a speech seems like a pretty oblique way to persuade future politicians to be "soft on Wall Street" or whatever, and a very straightforward way to get a good speech, but here we are.

Dan Davies thinks they want a good speech. "The fact that there is genuinely relevant business content there means that you can market the event to clients in a way that would be much more difficult for a day at the races, or front-row tickets to a pop concert," he notes, and having a famous speaker can "make the clients feel important, and burnish the image of the banker who organised the event as someone who is at ease in the corridors of power." Also:

The reason that we can be sure that these payments are not purely transactional is that nothing in investment banking is purely transactional. Across fields from advisory to research to capital markets, bankers are used to working on spec, building relationships and trust, and eventually getting paid at the time of a big transaction. This is not a transparent pricing model, and for that reason it is generally hated by regulators. It is, however, a very elegant emergent solution to a serious problem of information economics — the fact that it is impossible to tell whether a piece of content or advice is worth paying for without consuming it. The relationship model lets clients “try before they buy”, at the expense of breaking the connection between any particular piece of service and any particular piece of revenue.

Investment banking is a gift economy in which banks give clients an array of thoughtful but random gifts -- free financial modeling, revolving loan facilities, introductions to potential board and executive hires, the chance to meet Barack Obama -- in the hopes that one day the clients will give them the massive gift of a merger advisory mandate. Of course one concern is that this "uniquely bankerish way to do business" will rub off on politicians too. Davies is surely right that Cantor Fitzgerald is hiring Obama to impress its clients, not to influence regulation. But might some politician observe the transaction and decide to give Wall Street a few gifts while he's in office, in the hopes of one day receiving something in return?

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Matt Levine on what Cantor is buying:

So sayeth a guy on a billionaire's payroll.

[ThurgreedMarshall]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Matt Levine on what Cantor is buying:

The message this sends to people of color:

https://theestablishment.co/the-far-...s-90194cfddba6

TM

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall

The message this sends to people of color:

https://theestablishment.co/the-far-...s-90194cfddba6

TM

Have we seen any person of color or woman, other than Liz Warren, attack Obama for this?

I know, I know, women and people of color are all "establishment"* folks so they don't count.



* For Republicans, replace "establishment" with "pussies and goat-humpers". See, the Berners are much more civil in their bigotry. Progress!

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Finally, someone who can talk to Bernie/Trump voters in language they'll understand

[Tyrone Slothrop]

This. And somehow it's her fault.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Some people think Trump, among others, is trying to take it back.

Perhaps there's an ebb and flow. The economy runs unrestricted for a time, goes too far and is adjusted (for good or ill) by policy initiatives.

Or maybe we're defining economics and policy too narrowly, and viewing them too much as discrete rather than inextricably intertwined things. Policy is of course an element of economics. And economic considerations inform policy (above almost everything else).

This is excellent, by the way:

"If the previous era was a debtor’s paradise, where inflation made it cheaper to pay back debts, Blyth and Matthjis identify the current order as a creditor’s paradise where the real value of debt is maintained (on the struggle between creditors and debtors, see also James Buchan’s wonderful and neglected book on money, Frozen Desire). Thus, the current regime is pursuing a “policy of price stability in an environment of wage stagnation and rising debt levels driven by the [regime] itself” (p. 22). Stagnant wages and low job security led people to borrow money to retain their ability to consume, helping lead to the financial crisis. The policy responses to this crisis – which have boosted returns to asset holders, while imposing austerity on others – have not eased the systemic problems of the new regime, but rather worsened them."

This is status quo preservation defined. It's also a neat little explanation of why it won't work. I mean, sure -- it'll work for now. It may work for the next decade. But those forces cited above, moving in exactly the fashion described, are fixing nothing.

This selective asset reflation, a Potemkin recovery, is like watching the housing run-up in the early 2000s. You knew it couldn't hold. You knew the economy could not replace lost wages with dollars mined from HELOCs on rapidly appreciating residential properties. In that instance, we saw a financial collapse. Now, this time, perhaps we see the political collapse.