Hedge fund fallout & Other Merry Weather

James Devine jdevine at popmail.lmu.edu
Wed Sep 30 07:49:33 PDT 1998


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



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