Full disclosure: I am no fan of the Wall Street Journal’s editorials: in fact, I’ve commented on the liberties they often take with facts. But when they are on a pet peeve, they can become so overwrought that the level of agitation alone is amusing. And just because they are often wrong doesn’t mean they […]
Read more...We were one of the first to say that former Citigroup Charles Prince would come to regret his end-of-the-cycle-is-nigh comment initially reported in the Financial Times: Chuck Prince on Monday dismissed fears that the music was about to stop for the cheap credit-fuelled buy-out boom, saying Citigroup was “still dancing.” We are so bold as […]
Read more...One robin does not make a spring, but this front page Wall Street Journal article, “High-Interest Lenders Tap Elderly, Disabled,” is a real surprise. It’s not at all the sort of story one expects to see in the Journal, and comes one day after a very favorable piece on Michelle Obama. Is Murdoch having a […]
Read more...We didn’t think much of the New Hope Alliance, the program brokered by the Treasury Department to rescue subprime borrowers facing resets. The program’s criteria targeted those who were already paying fairly high initial interest rates with very little to no equity in their house at the time of closing. In other words, this group […]
Read more...Readers may have noticed that this site has gotten what one can most politely call visually busy. I’m not happy with the awkward adolescent ad-cluttered look. That in turn leads to a broader discussion of aesthetics, not just in terms of appearance but also positioning. The visual issue is pretty obvious: I’d like this to […]
Read more...This story, reporting on work by an international group published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, warned that human induced change could push the climate to certain tipping point as early as the current century. This research is getting little coverage in the US. According to a search in Google News, it […]
Read more...I am having a Dean Baker moment, although I suspect Baker will have even more fun with the front page New York Times article bearing the headline above. This is how the story starts: China’s latest export is inflation. After falling for years, prices of Chinese goods sold in the United States have risen for […]
Read more...While there was not much in the way of new developments on the bond insurer front on Tuesday, the media chatter features some interesting cross currents. On the one hand, the Financial Times, which had some relatively upbeat coverage the day before, had an article on the impressively large level of short interest in the […]
Read more...Here we go again. We have another Ben Stein column, “Can Their Wish Be the Market’s Command?” which says, I kid you not, that we have a bear because a whole bunch of traders got together and made it so. Since undue contemplation of Ben Stein logic is bad for anyone’s mental health, I will […]
Read more...A very good article by David Leonhardt in today’s New York Times raises a question that would have been regarded with considerable skepticism as recently as, say, even August, when the perturbations in the debt markets seemed to be the largely the result of the subprime meltdown. That question is whether the Great Moderation, the […]
Read more...Now it is hard to suggest that giant brokerage firm Merrill Lynch is being treated kindly by the press these days, given the deserved harsh scrutiny resulting from its staggering fourth quarter writeoffs. Nevetheless, we noted an oddity today. The Journal is running a story, “Springfield, Mass., Takes Aim at Merrill Over Subprime Losses,” that […]
Read more...Despite a sharply negative opening, the Nikkei is up as of this hour, so there is some hope that the frazzled nerves of Thursday might calm in the US too. The Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal both address one of the major causes of the mini-panic: a new focus on counterparty risk. The […]
Read more...Today, Ben Stein, in his New York Times column, “Larry, Curly, Moe and the Economy,” uses the Three Stooges as metaphor for the Fed’s actions: the central bank, like the celluloid comics, keep hitting the wrong person on the head. According to Stein, the Fed is unduly preoccupied with inflation and it should instead engage […]
Read more...The Wall Street Journal reports that Prince Al-Waleed, who salvaged Citi in the early 1990s (its stock was at $9 on its way to zero) is expected to pump equity into the bank again. Note there are some disparities between the Journal’s story and the one in the Financial Times. For example, the Journal says […]
Read more...Believe it or not, I found this less downbeat than most economic news du jour. Things are not yet as bad as they have been in past downturns, at least according to the Economist’s house measure: The Economist’s informal R-word index is also sounding alarms. Our gauge counts how many stories in the Washington Post […]
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