→ Washington’s Blog (Video embedded at Washington’s Blog) Feryal Ali Gauhar served as a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Population Fund and is the only UN Goodwill Ambassador who quit over the invasion of Iraq. Gauhar is a Pakistani actress, filmmaker, writer and human rights activist. Her most recent book is set in Afghanistan. […]
Read more...Normally, I don’t reproduce or excerpt from John Mauldin’s popular e-newsletters, but today he features a writer I particularly like, uber bear Albert Edwards of Societe Generale. To repurpose an old saw about pessimists, bears are bulls who have all the facts. Some of Edwards’ arguments, while well documented, aren’t new: employment stinks, the forward-looking […]
Read more...Arriving at the rush, with extra impetus doubtless imparted by the recent and ongoing Eurobanking panic, we have the Basel III capital and liquidity reforms (there’s a one pager, a full press release and, oh, not wholly unexpectedly, a somewhat anticlimactic phase-in timetable). In fact, the liquidity reforms here are just timetable entries – the […]
Read more...By Andrew Horowitz who writes at The Disciplined Investor It is Monday and we know that means either Merger Monday, Mutual Fund Monday or even Magical Monday . Well, it was surely a big volume morning as most traders are back to their desks. As China released their production numbers along with CPI, Asian markets […]
Read more...Scientists find drugs that may fight bat disease Associated Press (hat tip reader John M) Pharmaceutical Industry Funded Study Shows that Unauthorized Drug Copies Save Tens of Millions CEPR (hat tip reader John M) In Ad Wars, Democrats Shy From Ties to Own Party New York Times. Another indictment of Obama Catholics, Muslims, and the […]
Read more...With the fullness of time, housing prices are due to revert to something approximating the mean of their historical relationship to rental prices and incomes, albeit with an overshoot probable. But how quickly we reach that level will be very much a function of how quickly foreclosures take place and real estate is disposed of. […]
Read more...Once a Cassandra, always a Cassandra? That seems to be William White’s fate. White, the former chief economist of the Bank of International Settlements, is best known for his warnings in 2003 that many advanced economies were in the grip of housing bubbles, which Greenspan pointedly ignored. Although he is now celebrated for that call, […]
Read more...Wolfgang Munchau in the Financial Times gives a good recap as to why the recent spell of good cheer regarding the Eurozone is overdone. His central observation is that the Eurozone, like the US, patched things up with duct tape and bailing wire, and the hope was that the resumption of peppy growth would reduce […]
Read more...The notion that excessive supply can result in overly high costs no doubt contradicts most reader’s understanding of how markets work, but the market for medical services in the US bears no resemblance to an efficient market, in which buyers and sellers possess an equally good understanding of the merits of the goods and services […]
Read more...→ Washington’s Blog A number of American soldiers are blowing the whistle on the American military practice of indiscriminately killing Iraq civilians – by randomly firing bullets in a 360 degree circle – anytime that an improvised explosive device hits a U.S. soldier. As Truthout notes: Both [specialists Ethan McCord and Josh Stieber] say they […]
Read more...Apologies for the lack of new posts this weekend. I didn’t find material that struck me as juicy, and truth be told, I’m in face plant mode. Are Scanners Worth the Risk? New York Times Food figures need a pinch of salt BBC The REAL ‘Stuff White People Like’ OKCupid (hat tip Richard Smith). Hah, […]
Read more...This post first appeared on April 10, 2008 Floyd Norris of the New York Times, in an otherwise fine piece, “It’s a Crisis, And Ideas Are Scarce” has a paragraph that set my teeth on edge. But let’s deal with the parts that have merit first, and hold the rant in abeyance. Norris uses the […]
Read more...Freshwater turtles ‘in decline‘ BBC Klingon opera makes debut in Netherlands Christian Science Monitor There Already Was A Ground-Zero Mosque — On The 17th Floor Of The World Trade Center Clusterstock Feds probe Arizona for violating rights of non-native English speakers Raw Story “There Is No Economic Justification for Deficit Reduction” Galbraith to Deficit Commission […]
Read more...This post first appeared on April 8, 2008 While there have been dark mutterings about how Bear shareholders were cheated in the sale of the firm to JP Morgan, I don’t have much sympathy for that view. Plenty of businesses fail every day; equity investors usually lose their entire stake and employees are fired. While […]
Read more...This is a great interview of Tom Ferguson on Real News Network on the consequences of the “head’s I win, tails you lose” the financial sector has constructed with the rest of us, with Baltimore as object lesson. Enjy!
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