The New York Times reports that employers systematically under-report workplace injuries, citing a new GAO report. It says OSHA will adopt the GAO’s recommendations, including “requiring inspectors to interview employees during all audits to check the accuracy of employer-provided injury data.” Also:
But the G.A.O. report cited several academic studies that found that OSHA data failed to include up to two-thirds of all workplace injuries and illnesses.
Would that it would have cited some journalistic studies, or were there any? Also, it would have been nice if the Times had fleshed out the studies’ findings some.
— Bloomberg’s Roger Lowenstein has some suggestions on six reasons for the crisis and six ways to fix them, and notes that “Financial reform seems to be flailing. Legislation has been proposed, but it is complicated and diffuse. Most of the proposed fixes are incremental changes that don’t seem likely to prevent a future bubble.”
— The Epicurean Dealmaker disagrees with that Yves Smith post I pointed to earlier on what she called the weakness of the TARP overseer’s report on the AIG fiasco:
I read the SIGTARP report and find complete confirmation of two important points. First, the New York Fed, led by our current Secretary of the Treasury, botched the rescue of AIG so completely and so pathetically that it does border, as Yves says, on criminal incompetence. Second, the Fed had enough negotiating leverage in the entire affair to have substantially lessened the amount of taxpayer funds it ending up paying to AIG’s counterparties, to the tune of billions and billions of dollars. A competent and motivated negotiator could have extracted billions of dollars in concessions with little else.
As I've written elsewhere, the major problem is that there is short term value in a lie, so Wall Street has been telling a lot of lies to ensure they make expected profits. What Wall Street has been trading upon is the past reputation American markets had for being stable, regulated, and transparent.
What has happened since the 1980’s is those regulations have been removed and American markets have become less transparent as a result. This means big profits off of temporary misperceptions, which are often lies, which someone like William Black might label fraud.
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04032009/watch.html
These misperceptions are the defining characteristic of bubbles, which is why they invariably pop.
The end result of this repeated lie economy is death of the fundamental misperception, that American markets are stable, regulated, and transparent. Eventually investors will wise up to the fact that they are perceived as suckers and they will becomes hesitant with their money.
If the American market does not get the regulation that established the idea America was “Open and transparent for business” then people will get the idea “buyer beware”.
The government is trying to prevent that by saying, “I know the banks screwed up, so here’s your money back and we hope you’ll come back and play again.”
The government shouldn’t be underwriting the loses of these jerk banks, they should be putting them in jail.
If I was an investor, I’d respect that more.
#1 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Tue 17 Nov 2009 at 09:49 PM