Still in catch up mode…. Baby snow leopard filmed in wild mountains of Bhutan BBC (hat tip reader John Moore) Cool footage Stuxnet malware is ‘weapon’ out to destroy … Iran’s Bushehr nuclear plant? Christian Science Monitor (hat tip Crocodile Chuck and John D) “We Should Have Gone Swedish . . .” Barry Ritholtz (hat […]
Read more...In our escalating currency (really trade) dispute with China, many people argue that China holds the whip hand because it would quit buying US bonds. As we’ve explained repeatedly, that’s the last thing China would do, since stopping buying US debt (or more accurately, US dollars which it then moves into higher yielding assets than […]
Read more...The Financial Times provides an update on the Mess That Ate the Markets, circa September-October 2008. As we’ve harped on, Lehman’s bankruptcy advisors have been remarkably unhelpful in providing much insight on why the firm had such a big hole in its balance sheet. The previous estimate we had seen was $150+ billion (a swing […]
Read more...The disastrous twins, ratings agency credit ratings and RWAs (risk weighted assets), are still embedded in Basel III. Dodd-Frank does not like this much. The ratings agencies are still a big part of Basel III, though the December draft does allow for the alternative possibility of using bank-internal models for assessing credit risk. Alas, the […]
Read more...By Michael M. Thomas, Wall Street veteran, journalist, frequent commentator on Wall Street, and the author of eight novels set in the world of high finance; with a ninth—about the financial crisis and bailout—in progress. Cross posted from The Daily Beast. Washington is swirling with the usual rumors—the White House’s man was pushed! He jumped! […]
Read more...Apologies for thin links. My day job calls. Scammer Flips Free Kitties For Profit Consumerist Stroke gene discovered PhysOrg Ally Financial legal issue with foreclosures may affect other mortgage companies Washington Post Housing isn’t even close to stabilizing MarketWatch Rates are Low–Where Are All the Refis? Adam Levitin, Credit Slips China’s Currency and the Trade […]
Read more...A lot of commentators, including your truly, took issue with the NBER announcement that it had deemed the US economy to have exited a recession as of June 2009. I thought it might be useful to get a more nuanced reading of conditions on the ground from readers. So please weigh in: do you see […]
Read more...On the one hand, a lot of tea leaf watchers had expected Larry Summers to leave the Administration economic team for some time. Summers clearly wanted a bigger job, and the only jobs big enough to satisfy his rather large ego were Fed chairman (the one he really wanted) or Treasury chief. When it was […]
Read more...Michael Hirsh, until very recently of Newsweek, now at the National Journal, is doing a star turn in connection with his new book, Capital Offense: How Washington’s Wise Men Turned America’s Future Over to Wall Street I must confess I blurbed his book (I find it a bit weird that I am now considered a […]
Read more...Keiser is admittedly hyperbolic, but his colorful style has been effective in calling attention to some of the bad practices of financial institutions. This taping was on the day when I seemed to be the Typhoid Mary of studio operations. The audio kept failing (although the folks in NYC told me that happened often with […]
Read more...Warning over soaring dementia costs BBC Working from home and online shopping can increase carbon emissions Newcastle University Obama hints at personnel change Financial Times. Oof, saying someone is, or worse, has been doing a good job in the officialdom is the kiss of death. Gulf states in $123bn US arms spree Financial Times. Hhhm, […]
Read more...The news reports on GMAC Mortgage’s decision to halt evictions and foreclosure sales in 23 states, as originally reported by Bloomberg News, has generated keen interest in the mortgage and securitizaion communities. One reason is the oddly abrupt and broad nature of GMAC Mortgage’s action. GMAC Mortgage subsequently issued a rebuttal of sorts to the […]
Read more...By Steve Keen, Associate Professor of Economics & Finance at the University of Western Sydney, and author of the book Debunking Economics, cross posted from Steve Keen’s Debt Deflation. The latest Flow of Funds release by the US Federal Reserve shows that the private sector is continuing to delever. However there are nuances in this […]
Read more...→ Washington’s Blog As I noted last year: Our savings is … dramatically lower than Japan’s when that country entered into its Lost Decade. So the Japanese were much better prepared than we are. (I also noted that we’re in worse shape than America was going into the Great Depression … but that’s another story). […]
Read more...Representative Alan Grayson of Florida has asked the Florida Supreme Court to halt all foreclosures in the state in light of an investigation by its attorney general into allegations of pervasive foreclosure fraud by so-called “foreclosure mills”. Text below: September 20, 2010 Chief Justice Charles T. Canady Florida Supreme Court 500 South Duval Street Tallahassee, […]
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