There was a lively and enlightening discussion this past Monday at NYU’s Colloquium on Market Institutions & Economic Processes (formerly named the Austrian Economics Colloquium), when Peter Klein presented an excerpt from his new book , Organizing Entrepreneurial Judgment, co-authored with Nicolai Foss and published by prestigious Cambridge University Press.
In a piece for Bloomberg, reporter Sanat Vallikappen begins, “Go away, American millionaires.” Valliikappen then goes on to explain that wealth management firms the world over are declining to open offshore accounts for Americans.
“I don’t open U.S. accounts, period,” said Su Shan Tan, head of private banking at Singapore-based DBS, Southeast Asia’s largest lender, who described regulatory attitudes toward U.S. clients as “Draconian.”
Victoria McGrane reports for the Wall Street Journal that the FDIC says it has it all figured out as to how it will unwind those huge, complicated, multinational financial institutions should the need arise. McGrane writes,
The FDIC, known more for its bank deposit insurance, is working to persuade major investors, analysts, economists and bankers that it is building an apparatus that could cleanly guide a massive financial firm to failure without a taxpayer bailout.
Bookies in Britain have suspended betting on the “do” side of the proposition as to whether Greece leaves the Euro Zone. Ladbrokes gave up cutting the odds on a Greek departure and has stopped taking action. “It is safer for us to suspend betting than to keep cutting the odds,” a spokesman for Ladbrokes told CNBC. “We have been slashing the odds repeatedly over the last few days.”
“If we get some positive news we will open the book again,” he said.
A Brooklyn bagel shop owner was assessed $1, 650 in fines by a New York City Health Inspector because–get ready for this–poppy and sesame seeds fall to the floor as he makes his bagels. Alex Gormakh, the owner and a recent immigrant from Russia, opened B & B Empire Bagel Cafe in June 2011.
If we want want laborers and employers to come together to discover and create value-productive jobs, then the prescription is simple: leave labor markets alone and let them churn.
[This article is excerpted from volume 2, chapter 10 of An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought (1995). An MP3 audio file of this chapter, narrated by Jeff Riggenbach, is available for download.]
[Written Testimony before the Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology Committee on Financial Services, US House of Representatives, May 8, 2012]
Not to worry 99 percenters, Ben Bernanke’s Fed policy of just-north-of-zero interest rates is starting to gain traction. Sure, unemployment is still elevated, and the number of people on food stamps still enormous, but the news is out that the collateral loan obligation (CLO) market is starting to come alive.
