One of the defenses I occasionally hear about the Obama sellout to financiers runs something like this: “Obama isn’t interested in finance and economics, he delegated that to Summers and Geithner. Indeed, it was because he was so insecure in this area that he went with established figures who could [to use that horrid expression] […]
Read more...Last week, the simmering threat of trade disputes erupted into a full boil when Brazil’s finance minister Guido Mantega said that national governments around the world were weakening their currencies in an “international currency war” to gain competitive advantage. Mantega stressed that Brazil was prepared to back his words with action to lower the value […]
Read more...Berlin Researchers Crack the Ptolemy Code Der Spiegel Court overturns US tycoon’s will that left fortune to Panama’s poor Guardian (hat tip reader John M) Australian police taser video sparks anger BBC Japan Recycles Minerals From Used Electronics New York Times Obama’s promise to end tax cuts for rich unravels Financial Times Foreclosure? Not So […]
Read more...Welcome to our new readers from the FCIC. Lender Processing Services, a crucial player in the residential mortgage servicing arena, has been hit with two suits seeking national class action status (see here and here for the court filings). If the plaintiffs prevail, the disgorgement of fees by LPS could easily run into the billions […]
Read more...Boy, you have to love the way beleaguered companies strain to create the impression that unfavorable revelations are “mischaracterizations.” And Lender Processing Services certainly has its back to the wall. Its stock traded down 5% on Friday and another 8% today before it halted just prior to the close of trading on Monday. (for more […]
Read more...Apologies for thin links, I have an indecently early AM meeting (as in turned in and am back up, having mistakenly failed to publish this before retiring). Experts baffled by ‘small’ Bangladesh tigers BBC (hat tip reader John M) Collective Intelligence: Number of Women in Group Linked to Effectiveness in Solving Difficult Problems Science Daily […]
Read more...Barack Obama is purported to have studied the Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Reagan presidencies in depth before he took office, yet he appears to have ignored one of Lincoln’s best known sayings: “You may fool all the people some of the time, you can even fool some of the people all of the time, but you […]
Read more...This post first appeared on May 6, 2008 Steve Waldman at Interfludity did me the high compliment of picking up on an issue that is important to me and running with it: Yves Smith packs a powerful insight into an unassuming sentence: Liquidity is not a virtue in and of itself unless it produces a […]
Read more...More revelations from one of the epicenters of the housing implosion. 4ClosureFraud has published an eyepoppingly long list of affidavits of lost summons in foreclosure cases. This is a teeny extract from their sample, so readers can see what their roster looks like: I spoke to the individuals who compiled this sample; the roster on […]
Read more...Japan develops robotic seals to comfort sick and elderly BBC US to issue Europe travel warning BBC. Why did my BS detector go on when I saw this headline? Reading Banned Books on the Kindle Me and My Kindle (hat tip reader David C) Google’s CEO: ‘The Laws Are Written by Lobbyists” Atlantic. Quelle surprise! […]
Read more...A story up on Bloomberg may be far more significant than its bland headline, “China to Spur Domestic Demand to Stabilize Economy, Wen Says,” suggests. In recent posts, we’ve inveighed about the dangers of the path China is now on. Its economy is unbalanced to an unprecedented degree. Exports plus investment account for a full […]
Read more...A bombshell has dropped in mortgage land. We’ve said for some time that document fabrication is widespread in foreclosures. The reason is that the note, which is the borrower IOU, is the critical instrument to establishing the right to foreclose in 45 states (in those states, the mortgage, which is the lien on the property, […]
Read more...Ig Nobel for ‘whale breathalyser’ BBC. Yo! Magnetar shared in the economics prize! Animal farms are pumping up superbugs International Business Times (hat tip reader Skippy) Craig Venter: Without Scale, Algae Fuel Companies “Playing” Giga (hat tip reader Crocodile Chuck). I recall NC readers raising objections along this line a LONG time ago! The Bosom […]
Read more...The specter of demonstrations in Europe are not only likely to become a regular news item, but other economies have high odds of similar social stresses, a UN agency forecasts. The International Labour Organisation has pushed back its estimate of when global employment will return to pre-crisis levels back to 2015. Given the widespread signs […]
Read more...Australia has less income disparity than the US (not that that is saying much, the US is the most extreme among advanced economies) by virtue of having relatively high minimum wages and cultural opposition to big pay packages. Australians are pretty egalitarian; for instance, they are skeptical that large paychecks are fairly earned (ie. they […]
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