Sorry this went up so late! And some links got lost too. Grr! Where have all the butterflies gone? Guardian Mexico flu: Your experiences BBC (hat tip reader Dwight), These reports suggest the flu started earlier and has produced more fatalities than the official reports suggest. Fed study puts ideal US interest rate at -5% […]
Read more...The clout of the press has decayed enormously over the last 40 years. The fourth estate was feared, resented, and begrudgingly respected in the corridors of power. But rule by beancounters, savvy media spin, and access journalism (journalists who write pointed stories get frozen out) have largely leashed and collared the press. Indeed, a friend […]
Read more...Submitted by Edward Harrison of the site Credit Writedowns I don’t much like Ken Lewis. It should be fairly obvious to everyone that he is a man who has only his own interests at heart. But, his revelation that BofA bought Merrill Lynch for the agreed-upon September price, despite Merrill’s having an additional $7 billion […]
Read more...Submitted by Leo Kolivakis, publisher of Pension Pulse. Today is my birthday. I am now 38 years old. No big deal, it is just another Sunday for me. I woke up, had a cup of java and watched ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos. There was an interesting interview with Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The […]
Read more...‘Space blob’ baffles astronomers BBC Face Mining: Finding Who and When in Video PittPatt. Uses the original Star Trek as test case. Appeals court rules Gitmo detainees are not ‘persons‘ Raw Story Better Than Expected Economic Data? Dean Baker OPEC, Asia Ministers Call for Oil-Market Oversight Bloomberg Goldman’s Hypocrisy Never Ends Independent Accountant Jumping The […]
Read more...Despite her longevity as a California pol, house speaker Nancy Pelosi is looking like every bit as much of a dyed-in-the-wool financial services industry backer as the Congressmen on the New York-Boston corridor. As readers will know, this blog does not dwell much on the inside baseball of politics. But once in a while things […]
Read more...One thing that has me troubled about the financial mess is the degree to which the powers that be are wedded to a system that it clearly broken. In part, that results from financial capture of the government apparatus by the banking industry. But an equally sticky problem is the attachment to a rather recent […]
Read more...Submitted by Leo Kolivakis, publisher of Pension Pulse. Writing in the Financial Post, Stephen Donald, a consulting actuary with Buck Consultants, reports on the pension killer: When I started my career in 1973, the economy promptly went into a recession. The S&P 500 fell 48% and took four years to get back to break-even. At […]
Read more...Cure For Honey Bee Colony Collapse? Science News The Unloved Guardian. I find Samantha Morton to be a brilliant actress, and had no idea of her horrific history, which she used as the basis for a film. Information and the illegal market mechanism Trevon D. Logan Manisha Shah, VoxEU. Information asymmetry and male sex workers. […]
Read more...Forgive me for sounding even crankier than usual, but the reason deception sells is that so many people line up for it. The release claiming to describe how the stress tests were conducted in fact provided no new information. Some analysts were more than a tad dismissive: The central bank released a so-called white paper […]
Read more...Submitted by Rolfe Winkler, publisher of OptionARMageddon Ahead of official announcements regarding stress test results, OA thought we’d publish our latest update for banks’ tangible common equity, a metric that is likely to figure prominently in the results. A recent Reuters report said “U.S. regulators want the top 19 banks being stress-tested to have at […]
Read more...Submitted by Edward Harrison of the site Credit Writedowns China is really looking at a lot of other options to get away from the U.S. dollar. The latest report is that it has been building huge gold reserves. There is no doubt that China wants to get out and away from the U.S. dollar now. […]
Read more...“Catastrophic to Awful!” – The Banking Spin Cycle Satyajit Das, Eurointelligence Pound Weakens on Speculation U.K. May Lose AAA Credit Rating Bloomberg (hat tip reader Dwight) European Manufacturing Crash – February EconomPic Data Summers Caught a-Snoozin’ The Caucus, New York Times (hat tip reader Steve A). The topic was credit cards. However, it appears the […]
Read more...Nassim Nicholas Taleb gave a presentation in New York yesterday which hews closely to a recent piece of his, although his talk did include some additional interesting charts and anecdotes. The article is worthwhile, and worth your attention, but let me highlight the two things I found most interesting. First was his “fourth quadrant” construct. […]
Read more...Submitted by Leo Kolivakis, publisher of Pension Pulse. Today was the second meeting of the Standing Committee on Finance focusing on pensions and it placed someone in the hot seat. You can click here to view the entire meeting in English (note French only and floor videos are available by clicking here and then clicking […]
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