In the stone ages, when I worked for a short while at Goldman, it would have been unthinkable to trade openly against clients. But those proprieties were abandoned long ago. In 2007, the firm was unapologetic about its decision to short the subprime market (a big, perhaps the big reason for its departure from industry […]
Read more...Flying today, and guaranteed to be sleep deprived, so if you want to help, send good links. Thanks! Kindle Economics ZDNet Blankfein, Deputies Forgo Bonus as Goldman `Can’t Ignore’ Woes Bloomberg. No bonus for the top guys is the right gesture. but what about all the other Goldman managing directors? A conflicting sign of the […]
Read more...Some observers of the fall in US consumer spending have noted that despite the overall contraction, some merchants, such as Wal-Mart, are reporting solid sales gains. They infer that buyers are still spending, but have downtraded radically so as to reduce their total expenditures. While one needs to take care in generalizing from the US […]
Read more...It’s the collateral damage… think of all those innocents who had nothing to do with GM’s recidivist mismanagement who will nevertheless be hurt This probably will not go down as a classic (say, the Apple 1984 commercial or the “Harry and Louise” campaign that helped torpedo the Clinton health care plan). And there is a […]
Read more...Albino Africans live in fear after witch-doctor butchery Guardian Unhappy People Watch TV, Happy People Read/Socialize UM Newsdesk Japan’s $1 trillion to the rescue? Christian Science Monitor (hat tip reader Doug) How Did Iceland Go Bankrupt? John Emerson A Rescue Plan Without Taxpayer Money Gretchen Morgenson, New York Times Suffering Souls: The search for the […]
Read more...I have not made a formal tally of Roubini’s various lists of why the economy is going (and will continue to go) to hell in a handbasket, but recent sightings suggest his typical list is eight to twelve reasons. However, in his latest missive, on the subject of why the consumer is toast, Roubini outdoes […]
Read more...Nearly 20 years of stagnant to falling wages, threadbare social safety nets, and no returns on savings has produced a retiree class in Japan struggling to make ends meet. Good reason to worry at the sight of the US cribbing heavily from the Japanese playbook. From Bloomberg (hat tip Ed Harrison): More senior citizens are […]
Read more...Dead Parrot sketch is 1,600 years old Telegraph Toxic Cloud Masks Warming Effects Wall Street Journal (hat tip reader Don) Snowy game, VR goggles take burn victims’ minds off of pain ars technica Let’s Have Another Cup of Coffee Michael Kinsley, New York Times Lehman’s bankruptcy ’10 times more complicated than Enron’ Indpendent House price […]
Read more...Readers may know we have been concerned about the dramatic fall in shipments of basic materials, as reflected in the collapse of the Baltic Dry Index. This in turn, as we have also stressed, is in large measure to the difficulty of obtaining trade finance, in particular letters of credit. A very good post at […]
Read more...It is remarkable (and admittedly late, but late is better than never) that Congress is developing a spine and pushing back at Hank Paulson’s unprecedented land grab. Even better they got mad at something that made your humble blogger nuts. Trust me, I am highly confident that no Congressional aide picked up on the issue […]
Read more...One of the underlying assumptions of the Fed’s and many other central banks’ response to the credit crisis is that it can be halted, and hopefully remedied, by having the government backstop the troubled financial sector. One template is not to repeat the supposed mistakes of the Great Depression and Japan’s post bubble era, where […]
Read more...Yet more evidence that consumers are hurting. From the Wall Street Journal: U.S. retail sales took a record dive in October as consumers afraid for their jobs continued a retreat heading into the holiday shopping season and cut back spending on a wide variety of goods ranging from cars to furniture to electronics. Separately, U.S. […]
Read more...What is intriguing about this article describing the likelihood of more synthetic CDO woes is that no one has a grip on how big a problem this might be and who might be exposed. From the Financial Times: Synthetic CDOs, the risky and complex debt products that are based on pools of corporate credit derivatives, […]
Read more...Woman out $400K to ‘Nigerian scam’ con artists Katu Bailout Lacks Oversight Despite Billions Pledged Washington Post (hat tip reader Brian) Housing market ‘far worse’ than figures suggest Independent Wilbur Ross Says GM Bankruptcy Filing Would Be a `Total Mess’ Bloomberg Paulson is handing out free money like candy to a baby Ed Harrison. The […]
Read more...Heizo Takenaka, who held various posts in Junichiro Koizumi’s cabinet and is now director of the Global Security Research Institute at Keio University, provides a far reaching list of financial reforms. One can quibble with his count (he describes them as 11, but items one and four are two approaches to the same issue) and […]
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