Links 11/10/08

Credit crunch could boost science sector: analysts PhysOrg

Study: iPhones Twice As Reliable As BlackBerries MobileCrunch

Condoms Trump Abstinence in Obama Global AIDS Policy, Aide Says Bloomberg

Market’s Collapse Echoes in a Manhattan Tower New York Times

The Mini Depression and the Maximum-Strength Remedy Robert Reich

Time to pull the plug on AIG? Willem Buiter. Points out some glaring failures in the US response to the credit crisis in specific, helpful detail.

The new, improved fed funds market Jim Hamilton, Econbrowser. I should have pointed to this earlier, but better late than never.

Does a bigger boom imply a bigger bust? Brad Setser. How does he manage to make so many smart observations every week?

How Far Will Deleveraging Go? David Roche, Wall Street Journal (hat tip reader Don). A short but insightful piece.

Antidote du jour. This is how I feel about AIG:

Readers get a friendlier looking feline as a bonus (but don’t be too certain, this is Putin’s birthday present):

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3 comments

  1. Ben

    How Far Will Deleveraging Go? suggests that the credit crisis will continue throughout the recession unless the banking sector becomes highly ‘socialized’. Yikes.

    Reading it prompted a couple of questions that I need to do some more reading to answers…but perhaps the collective brain here can help? Sorry if they are very naive questions.

    1. Credit expanded during recent recessions, right?

    2. Are there any recessions since the depression that involved credit shrinking throughout the recession?

    3. Rapid growth seems to quickly morph into investment bubbles…is the absence of credit, leading to a long, slow period of growth possibly a good thing because we would avoid the post-recovery bubble?

  2. doc holiday

    A double feature, Yves? What does this do for metaphors but make them too complex. I was already pondering audio metaphors, and this is like overload dude. I guess the cat theme can be consolidated, but maybe they should play off each other, so maybe that was it, this is about a cat fight or the interplay between good cat bad cat. Maybe this is like that episode in Star Trek where Spock is split in two, or was that Kirk, maybe they were both faced with the same challenge … I'm not sure how that fits in, but, the duel nature of split brains can be related to the following challenging struggle:

    See & Feel: Star Trek 'This side of Paradise' – Poetry
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBo-eOls5_s

    On stardate 3417.3, the Enterprise arrives at Omicron Ceti III, where a Federation colony has been in place for several years. The planet however, is known to have been showered by Berthold rays, a deadly form of radiation which causes severe tissue damage within a few weeks of exposure. To make matters worse, there has been no communication with the colony for quite a while. The Enterprise's sad mission is to retrieve the colonist's remains and their equipment.

    >> Dumb vulcan! Happy … WTF?

  3. River

    Off Topic: Like Yves, Meredith has been calling em like she sees em. This is well worth the watch or read. Whitney basically sees most of the banks going forward as regulated utilities. Most of the banks equities in single digits. The banks that remain independent will do well if they survive the train wreck.

    11-5-08 Meredith Whitney Interview on CNBC with Maria Bartiromo )transcript and video of same).

    …snip…’Maria: You were the first to point out the upset in financial industry – please tell us where we are in cycle?

    Whitney: We are in a new part of cycle. We have digested the fact that the securitization is not coming back. Securitization made up 85% of mortgages and 50% of credit cards. Market is not coming back. Contraction of capital is one thing. But what happens going forward is contraction of the overall mortgage market – this has never happened before.

    Banks are not lending. Originations are down big in Q3. Loan balances getting smaller. Credit cards make up over $2 trillion in available credit lines being pulled out of system. Credit is being taken away form those that got credit in the past 15 years. Never in America had we seen this before. This is a more destructive market for consumer. This is not factored into market.’…snip…

    http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/

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