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It's interesting how short-sighted many so-called experts are when it comes to understanding the pace and path of forces swirling through the economy.

Even when it was apparent to everyone that the bubble had burst in housing, for example, some forecasters were predicting that municipal finances would not be seriously affected.

Aside from wishful thinking, one reason for the cognitive dissonance appeared to stem from the fact that people were not getting immediate reports from state and local officials that budgets were being wracked by falling revenues and rising costs.

Yet that should not have been a surprise to anyone. There are in-built delays, such as the time it takes to build a house or the grace period allowed for tax receipts to be remitted to authorities, that would postpone the moment of reckoning for months -- or longer.

The same holds true in terms of the state of the overall economy. The optimists seem to be saying that since today's data are not so bad, fears about a serious downturn are overblown.

www.financialarmageddon.com/...gone-over-toast.html - Preview

financial_crisis

When Michael Lewis looks back on the Wall Street he wrote about in his 1989 best-seller, Liar's Poker, the street looks positively quaint. At the time, it was shocking that an investment bank CEO made $3 million a year.

His newest book, Panic: The Story of Modern Financial Insanity, is a collection of essays and articles written during the past two decades. As Lewis tells NPR's Renee Montagne, it begins with the crash of October 1987.

www.npr.org/...story.php - Preview

financial_crisis

If Congress really wants to tax undeserved profits during the current economic melt-down, however, it should be looking at the finance industry. It is the greed, recklessness and irresponsibility of that industry that has caused our economic turmoil, exploding bail-out costs, rising unemployment and ballooning deficits. Why not tax the undeserved bonuses, severance packages, and capital-gain taxed carried interests of CEOs, hedge fund managers and the other masters of the universe who exploited deregulation and the good-old-boy "you scratch my back and I will scratch yours" milieu of the finance industry and reaped obscene amounts of undeserved profits?

www.huffingtonpost.com/...reet-windfall-pr_b_144093.html - Preview

financial_crisis

The era that defined Wall Street is finally, officially over. Michael Lewis, who chronicled its excess in Liar’s Poker, returns to his old haunt to figure out what went wrong.

www.portfolio.com/...The-End-of-Wall-Streets-Boom - Preview

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