negative nominal interest rates...,
2009-05-07 09:41:42
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and let's not forget to apportion some of the blame on the advocacy of one of the nation's most highly respected jurists...,
2009-05-07 11:15:19
Turns out AIG bonuses were 400% larger than previously reported:
that makes the total bonus size we now know about 454 million dollars. These bonuses are effectively transaction costs on taxpayers' covering 69.835 billion dollars (plus another 100 billion from the fed) in AIG's insurance fraud on the banks' real estate holdings.
The newly quadrupled bonus number now makes the transaction cost on redistributing that money to the banks an astronomical 2.6% fee, a 150+% higher transaction overhead than that provided by, say, the social security administration, and 30% higher than the transaction fees of the plastic monopoly.
Prior to quadrupling the reported rate one could defend the AIG bailout on the merits that at least it was a relatively inexpensive way to mail out the welfare checks to wealthy bankers, but I think some small iota of outrage may now be justified.
This will now become my mindless talking point when discussing the relative merits between boring, programmatic government bureaucracies, rent-seeking market agents, and the ultra-efficient giants of free market financial capitalism.