Ambrose Bierce, in The Devil’s Dictionary, defined an alliance as: In international politics, when two thieves have their hands plunged so deeply into each other’s pocket that they cannot separately plunder a third party. The corollary is that when your ally stumbles, you fall down too. China is learning that lesson the hard way. By […]
Read more...I must confess that I have found the events of the last few weeks mighty unsettling, for what they mean not just for the US and the world economy, but the possible implications for geopoltics and our own political processes. We are seeing big shifts along a lot of major fault lines. I found this […]
Read more...Beaked whales: Sounding off BBC The world’s 23 toughest math questions NetworkWorld House limits constituent e-mails to prevent crash The Hill. In case your were wondering. The Solution to Hunting’s Woes? Setting Sights on Women. Wall Street Journal. Is this sport, or cover for new fears about survival? Yes, you too can put food on […]
Read more...One of my hugely plugged in buddies has been warning that European banks are even more wobbly than US ones, and the ECB will wind up, like the Fed, cutting rates to as close to zero as it dares. Some of his grim view is based on the fact that EU banks on average are […]
Read more...Despite the hue and cry among the officialdom in favor of the bailout bill, the reading we have gotten from professional investors, some of them with very high level connections, and economists among our readership and personal network is strongly negative. Nevertheless, by making the bill a de facto ultimatum (“do this or we do […]
Read more...This message comes from a savvy reader/investor/economist, and is refreshingly succinct: At this stage, I think the bailout complicates matters enormously, because the immediate problem is 1) Preventing further runs on banks and money market funds by extending deposit insurance & mmmf insurance 2) Reviving the interbank market by placing the Fed as counterparty and […]
Read more...This doesn’t qualify as comic relief, but it is a tad freakish how well this clip works: Hat tip Ben Bitroff
Read more...Markets continue to be roiled by the upset of the effort to pass the touted Paulson bailout bill. As of this writing, the FTSE and Dj Stoxx 50 are up slightly, but money markets took a beating, the reaction worsened by end-of-quarter factors. From Bloomberg: The cost of borrowing in dollars overnight surged the most […]
Read more...Conventional wisdom has been that Treasuries have been the yet another bubble as cash exited equities and other risky investments, first feeding a commodities spike, then seeking a better home in Treasuries. But Merrill’s David Rosenberg, who was in a decided minority in seeing deflation as the likely outcome for the US (he has for […]
Read more...Bloomberg gives a recap of the some of the credit market reaction in Asia, which is that borrowing has become, not surprisingly, more costly. Rates moved up even in Japan, whose banks are virtually unaffected by the financial crisis (out of a total $1 trillion plus in subprime debt, only an estimated $8 billion went […]
Read more...Obama Runs Constructive Criticism Ad Against McCain The Onion Obama winning over ‘Wal-Mart moms’ Financial Times The methane time bomb Independent Mission Creep Dispatch: Winslow Wheeler Mother Jones News. A departure from our usual programming. On global Pentagon strategy. NYT Promotes Hysteria on Bailout Bill Dean Baker How I learned to love the Fed Steve […]
Read more...Our reader and sometimes contributor Lune worked on the Hill and was so kind as to send us his take on the choices facing the Senate and House leadership on the bailout bill, His position on it is rather clear: While many of you may be popping champagne bottles tonight in honor of the bailout […]
Read more...Boy, there have been bigger bad investments (TPG putting $7 billion into WaMu comes to mind) but seldom has one come cropper as quickly as Mitsubishi UFJ’s $9 billion interest in Morgan Stanley. The bank took a cool $500 million one-day loss. From Bloomberg: Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc. took a $506 million paper loss […]
Read more...Krugman’s post is here, with an acknowledgment that we also possess nukes. We’ve been on that theme a while. A few examples: America: Banana Republic Watch May 6, 2007 End of Dollar Hegemony Coming? May 22, 2007 “We may just have started to feel the pain” March 6, 2008 A secondary theme: Tthe US is […]
Read more...This report from Bloomberg: Rates in the $7 trillion-a-day market for borrowing and lending securities show that the logjam in credit markets is approaching the level seen after the March collapse of Bears Stearns Cos. Securities that can be borrowed at interest rates close to the Federal Reserve’s target rate for overnight loans between banks […]
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