Some optimists on the agriculture front, such as Nobel prize winning economist Gary Becker, have argued that increasing the productivity of farming would solve the problem of skyrocketing grain and food commodity prices. Only roughly 30% of crop-raising is done according to advanced techniques; if much of the rest of the land under cultivation was […]
Read more...The grim times for Wall Street and the finance-dependent New York economy continue, as Citigroup is expected to begin”aggressive” headcount cuts in investment banking. We’ve also added an update about Goldman making similarly deep cuts in investment banking, However, it is important to note that the firms define investment banking differently. At Goldman, it consists […]
Read more...An oil economics specialist, Mamdouh Salameh, who advises the World Bank and the UN Industrial Development Organisation, contends that oil prices would be at less than 1/3 of their current level had the US not invaded iraq. We’ve noted before that Iraqi reserves somehow gets overlooked, which is odd. Iraq’s production has fallen further than […]
Read more...PhysOrg reports that Russian president Dmitry Medvedev said that pollution could make certain parts of the country uninhabitable, possibly as soon as a decade from now. As much as China’s horrific pollution gets occasional attention in the West, Russia’s environmental woes win less scrutiny. Yet a seven-year study published in 2006 found that three of […]
Read more...Bad guys really do get the most girls New Scientist High school student faces 38 years in prison for hacking grades TG Daily Senate Housing Bill Requires eBay, Amazon, Google, and All Credit Card Companies to Report Transactions to the Government FreedomWorks Impeach Every Single Member of the Bush Administration. Now. Brad De Long The […]
Read more...Uwe Reinhardt is a professor at Princeton whose son (the Marine mentioned below) served in Iraq. This piece first appeared in the Princetonian in April; I thank Willem Buiter for reproducing it on his blog. As the Fed and the Treasury once again staff the shovel brigade behind one of Wall Street’s periodic asset-bubble parades […]
Read more...In the anxious January/February period, when New York Insurance Superintendent Eric Dinallo made Herculean efforts to come up with $15 billion for MBIA and Ambac, it was a high-stakes drama, since it was assumed that the loss of the AAA ratings would End the World of Finance As We Know It. Now that the once-unthinkable […]
Read more...The cold water Yankee crowd is not going to like the latest word from the IMF, which sees the US economy at close to a stall level on growth for the next six months. It believes that diminished demand will alleviate inflationary pressures and endorsed the idea of standing pat on interest rates for now. […]
Read more...Global war deaths have been substantially underestimated PhysOrg Soros, the Man Who Cries Wolf, Now Is Warning of a ‘Superbubble’ Greg Ip, Wall Street Journal. Maybe Soros simply underestimated the tenacity and resourcefulness of the power that be in keeping the charade going well past its sell-by date. How to save money on gas Jim […]
Read more...Warning: the post below is a bit geeky. Readers might start with our other current MBIA post and then return here for further details. Please also note that due to a reader catching an error I have looked further into the concept of claims paying resources and made considerable modifications to the paragraphs relating to […]
Read more...In a VoxEU post, Guillermo Calvo argues forcefully that rising commodity prices are the result of excess liquidity rather than supply and demand. From VoxEU: Here, one of the world’s leading macroeconomists argues that the explosion of commodity prices is the result of a very real global financial storm associated with excess liquidity in several […]
Read more...Insecticide ‘killing Kenya lions‘ BBC Saving the planet will be difficult, but do not despair Philip Stephens, Financial Times. Key quote: Denial is a still a big problem, as demonstrated by the latest survey of global attitudes from the Pew Research Centre. The good news is that majorities in 14 of the 24 countries covered […]
Read more...My favorite section of the indictment against Ralph Cioffi and Miatthew Tannin (which is good reading): As described to investors by the defendants and others, the High Grade Fund’s objective was to provide a modest, safe and steady source of returns to its investors. CIOFFI, TANNIN and others told investors that they could expect annual […]
Read more...As readers probably know by now, Moody’s, the last holdout on the AAA rating for the two big monolines MBIA and Ambac, downgraded both companies earlier today, and more harshly than Standard & Poor’s. And even with this downgrade, it underscored that more cuts are likely to be in the offing Per Bloomberg: MBIA’s MBIA […]
Read more...Felix Salmon and I see the contretemps between MBIA and the New York Times quite differently, as our posts (and e-mail exchanges) illustrate. I like Salmon, but ironically, the way we got to know each other was when he savaged a Gretchen Morgenson piece, and I took issue with some of his arguments, so this […]
Read more...