I have no doubt many readers will regard this as off topic, but it’s a great little talk. Its tag line at YouTube is “Lesley Hazleton explores the Koran and finds much that is quite different from what is reported in commonly cited accounts.”
Read more...There is a perfectly fine article up at the Wall Street Journal on the current, probably weakening, state of the housing market, save that it fails to discuss the elephant in the room, that of the continuing moribund conditions in the so-called private label securitization market.
Read more...anks, having trashed their once-sound model for the credit card business, are back trolling to find credit junkies, albeit of a somewhat safer type than the ones that blew up on them in the credit crisis.
Back in the 1980, the credit card industry, despite being more fragmented than now, had what looked a lot like oligopolistic pricing.
Read more...By Alexander Gloy, the founder and CIO of Lighthouse Investment Management
This week, EU leaders will try to agree on limited EU treaty changes at a summit (December 16-17). The aim is to establish a permanent rescue mechanism for countries in financial difficulties. On Monday and Tuesday (December 13-14) foreign affairs ministers will meet in Brussels to prepare draft conclusions. The BBC claims to have obtained a draft communiqué. We will analyze if a new European Stability Mechanism (ESM) has any chance to save the Euro.
Read more...The BBC has obtained a leaked copy of the EU draft communique on the so-called permanent bailout mechanism. Attentive readers may recall that current programs extend only to 2013, leaving a big question mark as to what would happen next, given the high odds that the countries perceived to be at risk would not be […]
Read more...Have you ever signed a document disposing of something valuable, like a house or your estate? Did you find you needed to get it witnessed, and that the witnesses couldn’t be family members, and had to put their addresses on the document too? Then it may surprise you to learn that you are following legal precepts established by a long dead Welshman; this one, in fact:
[caption id="attachment_14376" align="alignnone" width="631" caption="Sir Leoline Jenkins (hat tip Wikipedia)"]
[/caption]
whose tomb is at Jesus College, Oxford; oddly, no more than ten minutes’ amble from where I am sitting, carving out this post. I like the way his “Llewellyn” has been semi-Englished to “Leoline”. Right now, he is probably spinning, at a fair clip, for he is the originator of the Statute of Frauds.
Read more...Wild food crop relatives to be ‘rescued’ BBC
Revealed: How the CIA protected Nazi murderers Independent
An evaluation of airport x-ray backscatter units based on image characteristics Leon Kaufman and Joseph W. Carlson, Journal of Transportation Security (hat tip Slashdot). Basically says backscatter X-ray machines aren’t very effective….
Read more...We followed Chris Whalen, who gave a pretty apocalyptic prognosis for 2011.
You can view the segment here. Enjoy!
Read more...By Satyajit Das, an international expert on financial derivatives and author of Traders, Guns & Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives.
Nicholas Phillipson (2010) Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life; Allen Lane
Matt Taibbi (2010) Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire and the Long Con That Is Breaking America; Random House
Joe Nocera and Bethany McLean (2010) All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis; Portfolio
Hamish MacDonald (2010) Mahabharata in Polyester: The Making of the World’s Richest Brothers and Their Feud: New South
Jeff Kingston (2011) Contemporary Japan: History, Politics and Social Change Since the 1980s; John Wiley
Read more...Doctors shocked by spread of swine flu – and its severity Independent (hat tip reader May S)
Lost Civilization May Have Existed Beneath the Persian Gulf LiveScience
Face mask that’s so good every crook wants one Independent (hat tip reader May S)…
Read more...I suppose the latest efforts taken by the members of the foreclosure industry to silence and neuter critics represent a perverse form of progress. If you go by the Ghandi timeline, “First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win,” opponents of bad foreclosure practices seem to have done enough damage as to now be worth fighting.
But what is telling are the desperate-looking but nevertheless potentially effective measures being deployed to hamstring the opposition. The vanguard of this effort are foreclosure defense attorneys, many of whom are solo or small firm operators, with not hugely lucrative practices or doing pro bono work (you don’t make a lot of money defending people who have no money).
Suing someone like that, even with a suit that seems spurious, throws a wrench in their operation….
Read more...By Bill Black, Associate Professor of Economics and Law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and a former senior financial regulator
This column analyses Obama’s claim that he got the better of the Republicans in the negotiations.
The administration (implicitly) argues that its claim of extraordinary negotiating success represents a miraculous accomplishment given the facts that the Republicans were holding all legislation hostage to their non-negotiable demand that the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest of Americans be extended and the administration’s irrevocable decision that it could not call the Republican’s bluff because the economy would likely sink back into recession unless tax cuts for the middle class were immediately passed…..
The third problem is that no element of the claimed miracle is true….
Read more...ep. Marci Kaptur of Ohio has introduced a short bill, H.R. 6460, which would seriously restrict the operations of MERS by effectively removing Freddie, Fannie and Ginnie as users. The bill would bar the GSEs from guaranteeing or owning any mortgage that is either assigned to MERS or lists MERS as the mortgage of record. Note that those are the two roles typically set forth in the registrations at local courthouses which register mortgage in the name of MERS…..
Read more...a href=”http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/stork-that-ate-babies-rather-than-delivering-them-2155948.html”>Stork that ate babies, rather than delivering them Independent (hat tip reader May S)
Doctors don’t need to fear red heads PhysOrg
Italian Financial Crisis: A.D. 33 Bill Conerly….
Read more...By Tom Adams, an attorney and former monoline executive, and Yves Smith
As reported in the Financial Times, Senator Carl Levin of the Senate permanent investigations released damaging e-mails in which Goldman traders discuss “killing” some mortgage-related CDS shorts in May 2007. Levin understood the implications, that damaging the shorts would allow Goldman to buy CDS even more cheaply, but did not tease out the logical conclusion. This move was a likely a major step that allowed Goldman (and fellow dealers not under investigation who likely pursued parallel strategies) to package its remaining mortgage dreck into CDOs, which were launched as the reported squeeze evidently took place, and unload as much toxic inventory as possible before the wheels came hopelessly off the subprime bandwagon….
Read more...