Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for June 12, 2018

Blond guy with glasses, how are you going to get Joanie’s job when her position is going to be eliminated?

It is fantastic the way Lacey and her staff collectively misunderstand each other.

This is politics. They’re only looking out for number 1.

At the end of 1980 the actual book value of the S&L industry (as assessed by the Federal Home Loan Bank Board) was $32 billion, and not $184.3 billion per the official numbers. The most significant causes of the S&L crisis predate Reagan and more than one of his predecessors. The late William Niskanen, head of the Cato Institute at the time of article republication, offered some explanations.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2004/06/heads-i-win-tails-you-lose-william-niskanen/

Since one of the industry’s “asset shocks” (Niskanen’s term) came from the early ‘80s recession, it’s worth noting how that recession happened. Unlike the 1990 recession, it had only one moving part: Paul Volcker. He followed the prescription Milton Friedman laid out in his 1979 book “Free to Choose” – hyperinflation is caused by debasement of the currency, which in a fiat system means overexpansion of the money supply, and is thus cured by the tight money policy that Volcker would eventually implement. The short-term shock would create a temporary recession. Uncle Milty accurately predicted the side effect and the cure.

A short term shock that has had quite an effect for some decades now on the 90+% of the population that ought to have been the ones who were too big to fail.

Rosette, are you saying that politicians are human?

As the rats scuttle off the stinking…ah…sinking ship – an cat sits eagerly on the dock.

We are beginning to see some of the rats deserting now, but the real mass exodus will take place in November 2018 !

I thought they didn’t repeal the laws preventing banks from certain investments until 1996. This is interesting.

That’s how we felt in aerospace companies every time a meeting was held to reassure us there would be no layoffs.

@JoeySmith : Wow. Talk about taking a stick to a hornet’s nest. I’m just going to sit back and watch this.

Imagine that…turning the banks into casinos….it’s happening again because we never learn…..