Sub-prime Chicago, Tony Curzon Price

tcp-old — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 11:37:28 +0000

I've been looking forward to Becker's blog posting on sub-prime for a while. I think the current financial crisis will be to economic liberalism what Iraq was to political liberalism: a failure so vast, so shameful, that many will be led to re-assess their world view.

So what does Chicago-school Becker make of it?

He starts with a great piece of fighting rhetoric: The "belief in the beneficial effects of greater knowledge aboutmortgage terms is inconsistent with the evidence that the mostsophisticated banks and investment companies, including Merrill Lynch,Citibank, and Morgan Stanley, have written down their housinginvestments by billions of dollars. No one can reasonably claim that these banks lacked the skills andknowledge to evaluate all the terms of, or the likelihood of repayment,on the subprime and other mortgages that they originated or held asassets."

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Sub-prime Chicago, Tony Curzon Price