Author Archives

Archive of the posts written by author : Henry Oliner.

Buffet’s Sweet Goldman Deal

While the players and regulators were struggling to get investors to commit capital to the major banks to avoid a meltdown, Warren Buffet was called upon several times.  He consistently turned them down because the assets were too complicated to

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The Danger of Success

“Washington may also be tempted to go on as before for the same reason it did in the wake of its Continental Illinois and Long-Term Capital management bailouts. Back then government regulators and financial executives came to believe: if we

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The Other 99 Percent

From Thomas Sowell’s Intellectuals and Society “Central planning is just one of a more general class of social decision-making processes dependent on the underlying assumption that people with more per capita knowledge (in the special sense) should be guiding their

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The Danger of a Systemic Risk Regulator

“Creating a systemic risk regulator would be a continuation of that regulatory confusion. Just as bad, a systemic risk regulator would work against Washington’s credibility in ending too-big-to-fail.  Investors would be lulled into false confidence that the government is looking

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Encouraging Recklessness

“The first step to restoring the robust financial markets that can support global capitalism is to reassert the market’s ability to discipline itself without endangering the economy. Through its too-big-to-fail  policy, expanded over the quarter of  a century after Continental

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Blinded by Bailouts

“In truth, markets had been trying to work since 1984, with Continental Illinois, desperately sending signals that the modern financial system was shot through with untenable risks that required a renewal of long-held regulatory principles. But government bailouts thwarted real

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Understanding the Meltdown

(this was published previously in the Macon Telegraph) Being in the middle of a record economic crisis presents a rare learning opportunity.  Several books are worthwhile for those seeking to understand what just happened. Too Big to Fail by Andrew

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Avoiding Political Influence in your Investment Decisions.

While I share the great concern about her destructive economic policies of this administration, I am getting a contrarian tick about the dollar and gold. Every right wing talk show and business TV show is flooded with adds selling gold

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Ruled by Parasites

The following was a reader’s comment to my article in American Thinker, “Why Elitists Fail“ Human beings can exist in one of only two modes: by controlling nature, or by controlling those who control nature. Those in the first category

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Critiquing Populists

David Broder writes a great piece in the New York Times, The Populist Addiction excerpt: It’s easy to see why politicians would be drawn to the populist pose. First, it makes everything so simple. The economic crisis was caused by

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From Wall Street to Copenhagen

Science is a realm of discovery, skepticism, understanding, confirmation and challenge. But throughout history science has been polluted by political considerations.  In the Middle Ages the church considered any theory of the universe without the earth at the center heresy.

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Why Voters Rejected Elitism

From “Why Elitists Fail” in American Thinker, January 30, 2010 Even the brightest minds cannot escape emotional impediments to a rational conclusion. Combining such emotional rationalism with a focus on theories detached from the verification of practical experience can be

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Controlling the Access to Data

Thomas Sowell writes in the National Review The ‘Science’ Mantra Excerpt: Today, politicized “science” has too big a stake in the global warming hysteria to let the facts speak for themselves and let the chips fall where they may. Too

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The Tao of Arby’s

Tales from the road… At an Arby’s/ Pilot Truck stop off I-65 in Indiana.  A conversation: ” I would like a medium Arby’s roast beef sandwich.” “Would you like to get double meat for an extra dollar, sir?” (surprised) “Wouldn’t

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What Did Not Cause the Financial Collapse

With the clarity of time we can look back at the brink of the collapse that hit us just prior to the last national election.  In the midst of the collapse we were stunned and angry, and tended to blame

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The Four Elements of a Free Market

“Could free markets have sorted out the mess without extraordinary government action? Yes, but only by destroying the remains of the financial system and possibly putting tens of millions of people out of work. Despite virulent public opposition to the

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Replace the FDIC with the CIIC

Here is an idea for our times. We create a Federal Agency called the Consumer Investment Information Corporation. It is funded by a fee on all banks and institutions needing an independent investment rating. It is governed by nine people;

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Facing Mistakes

One of the most stifling attributes of political life is the inability or the unwillingness for anyone to admit a mistake. There is so much uncertainty about actions that often require significant action that mistakes are bound to happen- serious

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The Job Creation Myth

I am constantly amazed at how sitting political leaders and naive citizens think that the government can create jobs. If the government could create jobs why would we ever tolerate any unemployment?  Either the leaders are economically ignorant or liars.

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An Antidote to Arrogance

from Paul Johnson “The study of history is a powerful antidote to contemporary arrogance.  It is humbling to discover how many of our glib assumptions, which seem to us novel and plausible, have been tested before, not once but many

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