- Robert Litan in Fortune on why Elizabeth Warren went after him;
- “Economists have no idea how to measure the value created by the financial sector.” [Arnold Kling]
- W$J at end of August had an investigative report on the (opaque, high-discretion, unaccountable) system of installing “monitors” in banks and other financial institutions to settle civil or criminal charges;
- Update: in a sidebar to my City Journal piece on New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman this summer, I covered his charges of “redlining” against small upstate banks that did not operate in inner cities; now Schneiderman has extracted $825,000 from a Buffalo bank [NY AG press release]
- No kangaroo courts at the SEC, please [Bloomberg View editorial on in-house adjudicators, earlier here, etc.]
- How the FATCA law, deplored in this space for years, makes life hard for U.S. expatriates/spouses [Colleen Graffy, WSJ]
- “Except for the ten to twelve million people who use them every year, just about everybody hates payday loans.” [New York Fed “Liberty Street Economics” via Tabarrok] Despite reports of FDIC back-off, Operation Choke Point controversy not over [Ballard Spahr via Kevin Funnell]
Filed under: banks, Elizabeth Warren, Eric Schneiderman, FATCA, Operation Choke Point, settlement monitors
3 Comments
Economists have no way to measure the value created by the banking sector? Horrors! Without some means of declaring what, if any value, a bank creates, how is an economist supposed to be paid for that declaration?
Bob
I think of the financial sector as the lubrication system for the society. It doesn’t do anything really productive, but it makes sure that the productive bits can function. Like the oil in an engine that does no real work, but makes sure that the moving parts do not grind to a halt. It is very hard to ascribe a value to these things, but they are certainly very valuable.
See also — accounting, law, real estate brokers, and the list goes on