Currently viewing the tag: "Bubbles"

GM Sours On Social Media, Pulls $10 Million In Advertising From Facebook

by Metavirus on 16 May 2012
I’ve been saying it for years: the countless billions of dollars rushing into “social media” companies is largely a farce and a bubble that is destined to burst.  Someone still needs to tell me why Joe’s Plumbing Supply includes a Facebook and Twitter icon at the end of their commercials.
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Megan McArdle Has Been Dishing Out a Lot of Fail Lately

by Metavirus on 29 July 2010
I really don’t know what prompted Megan McArdle to write an emotional screed about the evils of the thirty-year fixed mortgage but this post at the Irvine Housing Blog, which lays into her bullshit with its entire tactical nuclear arsenal, is just brutal.

I especially loved this bit.   McMegan:

Until the Great Depression, the mortgage was a very, very different product. There was no amortization, and down-payments were often massive–half or more of a home’s value. They lasted perhaps 3 or 5 years, and were rolled over if borrowers could not meet the balloon payment. The default crisis of the 1930s resulted from the inability to roll those loans, and so the government stepped in, causing the fifteen year self-amortizing loan to proliferate. This process was especially accelerated by the VA loans that were offered to returning veterans. Eventually, the payment terms stretched out to allow more and more people to buy homes.
This had some curious effects. As aforementioned, it was ultimately not good for banks that were restricted to the kind of boring business many commentators would like to see banks return to: loaning money to consumers and small businesses, and taking deposits.
The riposte:
Yes, that is exactly what banks are supposed to do. Is that boring? Are we supposed to have an exciting banking system? Did everyone enjoy the volatility in our economy over the last several years? It was certainly exciting. Financial innovation is a fallacy. Banks are supposed to be boring, stable institutions. What does she want?

What the fuck is up with McMegan recently?

For all the bitching that conservatives do about empathy and emotion, she is really just writing from her gut at this point.

Also, too: Megan McArdle’s Hack Post on Elizabeth Warren’s Scholarship

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