The Consumer Spending Mirage Business Week (hat tip Brad De Long). Barry Ritholtz has complained for some time that retail sales and consumer spending increases overstate real gains in expenditures. This piece elaborates upon this theme. Central Bankers Say Crisis Not Over, Urge Regulation Bloomberg After the Recession: What then? Stormy Angry Bear What Have […]
Read more...The New York Times has finally deigned to report on the fact that the Bureau of Labor’s unemployment rate (aka “headline unemployment”) does an incomplete job of capturing the proportion of the population out of work. The article by Floyd Norris, “Many More Are Jobless Than Are Unemployed,” is less than complete. Despite its professed […]
Read more...It’s no surprise to anyone in America that being middle class isn’t what it used to be. Even though we have more gadgets, middle class workers in the 1950s and 1960s could afford to have stay-at-home wives. For mort households, it takes more hours of paid labor, and more borrowing, to support a bourgeois lifestyle. […]
Read more...For sale: the video archive Wal-Mart should have erased Independent Lehman CFO Says Market Recovery May Take Until 2009 Bloomberg. That’s quite a concession…. Windows is ‘collapsing,’ Gartner analysts warn ComputerWorld ECB hawks defiant as storm gathers Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Telegraph Australian girl, 6, in case against miner PhysOrg Financial Leaders Try To Repair Damage From […]
Read more...We commented the other day on the surprisingly large jump in China’s foreign currency reserves, noting that the monthly gain wa the biggest on record, when an appreciating yuan ought to put the growth in reverse (although one must note that the yuan hasn’t gained much if any ground relative to non-dollar currencies). I’m following […]
Read more...Housing Wire provides this report: Maryland governor Martin O’Malley joined with local elected officials and consumer advocates last week to sign emergency legislation that targets troubled borrowers in the state. Perhaps the most immediate industry impact will be felt by just one of the three bills passed last week — the obscenely-long-named Real Property–Recordation of […]
Read more...We were not at all keen about the TPG-led $7 billion investment in Wamu, and we appear to have company. Note that it’s one thing for an analyst to downgrade a stock, quite another to recommend selling it short. From Bloomberg: Washington Mutual Inc.’s full-year loss will be wider than first estimated, according to Goldman […]
Read more...The Financial Times reports a rare bit of encouraging news on the credit crisis front, namely, that investment banks have been making less use of the Fed’s liquidity facilities of late: Direct borrowing from its new primary dealer credit facility fell $8bn from $34bn (£17bn) to $26bn in the week to April 9, the Fed […]
Read more...Brazil makes ‘rainforest’ condoms BBC Health Care Horror Stories Paul Krugman IMF rejects criticism over global turmoil Financial Times. The IMF says the US credit crisis isn’t its fault, pointing out that America was among the minority of countries that refused to participate in the Financial Sector Assessment Programme, a joint IMF-World Bank program to […]
Read more...In a very bad bit of news for the US, the Los Angeles Times (hat tip Lune) reports that the Chinese policy of letting the yuan appreciate has not succeeded in reducing the country’s massive increases in foreign reserves. In fact, the situation is getting worse rather than better. Normally, when a country’s currency appreciates, […]
Read more...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 Paul Volcker’s speech at the Economic Club of […]
Read more...Just when you think you’ve heard everything about how low the Fed has stooped to rescue an industry that really ought to be left to twist in the wind a bit, another squirmy critter crawls out from under a rock. Investor Scott directed us to a Bloomberg story that cites a Morgan Stanley report which […]
Read more...Just when market participants were patting themselves on the back, focusing on indicators that suggested the credit crunch was easing, even making forecasts that it would be behind us before year end, troubles creep back on little cat feet. The proximate cause for Fed intervention wasn’t the subprime crisis or rise in agency spreads, but […]
Read more...Storied investor George Soros believes that the credit crisis is far from over, and sees regulatory failure as a major cause. From Bloomberg: Billionaire George Soros said the global credit crisis will get worse before it gets better. Soros, who said lack of oversight is partly responsible for problems in the financial markets, criticized regulators […]
Read more...In a departure from our usual programming, I thought I would introduce a real estate opportunity (yes this is an ad of sorts). But as you can see, it is particularly attractive and also presents an interesting case example of the issues involving the marketing of unique and illiquid assets. The asset in question is […]
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