Enemies of Reason Poundshop potshots at the media moral maze.

Increasingly invaluable

...is someone who can write about economics without (a) being a smug bastard who implies that you know nothing and he has the keys to the world and (b) shrugging his shoulders at the more ridiculous excesses of the City, saying 'These things happen in the grown-up world' and heading off for an absolutely enormous lunch on exes in the Gherkin.

I think Robert Peston is that man. True, he works for the BBC and will no doubt be written off in some quarters as an agent of the spectral Left who hate the wealth-creating entrepreneurs without whom every single man, woman and child in the world would be lost souls scratching around in the dust for bits of mud and flint to eat. But fuck that, because it's bullshit.

Today, Peston looks at the latest Jenga block that's been pulled away - insurance. And why it might not be very much insurance at all.

Paterson is implying that many of the writers of credit default swaps don't have the means to make good on their liabilities, that they were taking a punt, hoping to make easy money from insurance they thought would never be claimed on.
It's one of those "emperor's new clothes moments" that leaves me almost lost for words (almost).

Enlightening stuff.

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1. Bloody hell, it’s something good on the BBC’s website