Hedge fund fallout & Other Merry Weather

[James Devine]

At 04:23 PM 9/29/98 -0400, Carl Remick wrote:
on the LTCM bailout: > ...  When the NY Times, for God's sake, starts
talking about
>the dangers of creeping "crony capitalism" in the nation, there's a
>definite shift in the wind zeitgeistwise.  I think Will Sutton in that
>Observer piece that was posted here nailed the implications of the LTCM
>bailout exactly:  "Last week, free market economic theory died."
>There's a big difference between the run-of-the-mill hypocrisy that
>normally oils our economic workings and the *naked* hypocrisy seen in
>the Fed's orchestration of the LTCM bailout while we urge the rest of
>the world to heed market strictures.  PR-wise, this is much worse than,
>say, the RTC bailout -- with thrifts, at least, you could *claim* to be
>protecting grass-roots financial interests to some extent; it's hard to
>make the "jes' lookin' out for the folks" argument with the LTCM crowd.

it's interesting to note that Matt Miller -- a professional
middle-of-the-roader, who works for US News & World Report and plays the
"center" on an amusing public radio show called "left, right, and center"
(with Bob Scheer and Ariana Huffington on left and right, respectively) --
was a bit peeved by this bailout in today's LA TIMES. No one, he said in
his op-ed piece, ever held an emergency meeting of this sort to bail out
the children stuck in poverty....

Jim Devine jdevine at popmail.lmu.edu &
http://clawww.lmu.edu/Departments/ECON/jdevine.html