Hernando de Soto has an interesting opinion column, Toxic Assets Were Hidden Assets, in today’s Wall Street Journal.
He makes the point that we’ve been making since September: that the mortgage debacle is separate from the liquidity/confidence crisis.
We think that he overstates the effect of derivatives–what he calls hidden assets–in creating the problem; however, we do think that the lack of accounting and the opacity of the contingent claims have exacerbated the liquidity/confidence crisis and make more difficult any restoration of confidence in large financial firms. Despite the… Read the rest

















































