That is the Time cover story from February 15, 1999. It discusses the fallout from the 3Q & 4Q collapses of Russia, LTCM and Asia.
One of many gems:
And awful as the Asian correction is, it was, in a sense, inevitable because those economies had trundled billions of dollars into useless real estate and industrial development. “In general,” said Summers, 44, as he sat in the Frankfurt airport last September recovering from a hectic trip to Moscow, “we start with the idea that you can’t repeal the laws of economics. Even if they are inconvenient.”
Real-estate bubble… repealing economic laws… inconvenient realities… Larry Summers…
Where have I heard that story before? Oh and there is also a foreboding quote from a younger Geithner later on in the piece.
Be sure to read Jeff Tucker’s germane piece from December 1998 discussing these phenomenon and the policy makers.
Via Robin Tovson
{ 11 comments }
Didnt our founding father coin the phrase “Give me liberty of give me death”. Well death sounds pretty good right now.
Tom,
You sound like S.M. Oliva. Do me a favor, if you are planning to die, take some of the bastards with you. And be clean about it, leave the innocent ones safe; that should go without saying.
ps. There will be 1776 virgins waiting for you in heaven.
“ps. There will be 1776 virgins waiting for you in heaven.”
I have 10 fingers and I can satisfy myself, trust me those bitches will remain virgin for eternity, LOL !
That picture is gonna give me nightmares!
Could ya at least photoshop out SAVE and replace it with DESTROY?
Oh, and while you’re at it, change prevented to promoted.
Ha ha ha ha. This is hilarious. What a great piece of mining. No one in Washington ever seems to get called on their previous claims. That cover picture and the story speaks for itself. It’s comedy even just to reproduce it!
Peter Schiff in his YouTube shows constantly asks why anyone trusts these “experts” that are always wrong.
Because the American public has a 10 second attention span and no long-term memory.
Ah, the Infernal Trio…
Larry Summers resembles John Wayne Gacy. Fitting, as both are/were clowns.
Greenspan is well out the door, initially, at least, under his own power. Rubin is out the door with power contributed by Citigroup’s board of directors.
But Summers… Summers is said to visit the Oval Office DAILY to whisper in the Obamaconomist’s ear.
I wouldn’t mind, if the guy in the Oval Office didn’t have SO MUCH POWER.
I thought you were planning on saving the world, Tim?
I’m stunned (but impressed at the dedication) that someone has the time to be reading ten year old Time magazines. Surely there is more to this than sitting and waiting for a dentist/doctor/barber’s appointment?
By bailing out earlier financial crisis they simply allowed the same bad practices to continue and expand. There are two parts about the free market, one is rewarding success and the other is punishing failure. Some of the people involved have such big egos that slaps on the wrist are not enough and they need two by fours to the back of the head to get them to realize that for example “Real Estate does not always go up in valueâ€.
Another bad idea is that somehow you can create a system where you have less knowledge about what is being bought yet still pretend to know the true value of it. So they collateralized real estate loans into complex financial instruments which hid the value of what was actually being sold, then they sold it to people around the world who had little idea about the local real estate conditions that gave the real value of the loan.
The globalization of finance has many benefits and also many risk, by pretending to minimizing the risk it only increase the actual risk since people bought when they should not have bought
Comments on this entry are closed.