World will not meet 2C warming target, climate change experts agree Guardian Biomass ‘worse than fossil fuels’ BBC NY looks into possible pension kickbacks Reuters SEC to review whether BofA broke the law Financial Times. For once, the SEC is acting like a regulator as far as a big company is concerned.The exception that proves […]
Read more...Now I will admit my headline overstates John Dizard’s current column in the Financial Times a hair, but only a hair. Dizard has a somewhat baroque way of presenting his messages, and the color can take the edge off his communiques. Nevertheless, he has cultivated contacts among central bankers as well as at the major […]
Read more...KBW, a firm specializing in bank stocks, expects Wells Fargo to show $120 billion in “stress test losses”, meaning losses under the assumption of a supposed worst case of recession through the first quarter of 2010 and unemployment reaching 12%. Note that the 12% figure (according to Bloomberg) was included in the analyst’s report;. This […]
Read more...Submitted by Lune. As the Fed embarks on quantitative easing, a large number of economists have voiced concerns about the resulting inflation that we may face once the economy starts to recover. The traditional tool for fighting inflation is contracting the money supply, usually by decreasing the reserves available, thus constraining the total amount of […]
Read more...Submitted by Edward Harrison of the site Credit Writedowns I last posted on “Credt Writedowns” on Thursday before the Easter Holidays in two posts very much at odds with one another. The overall thrust of the first post was that the financial services industry in the United States was due to gain from some very […]
Read more...Veteran osprey lays Easter egg BBC Horse breeders braced for prices to stall Financial Times Amazonfail: A Call to Boycott Amazon Edward Champion. Amazon is engaging in some pretty serious censorship, I am now torn about running Amazon ads. U.S. institute names 99 top ethical companies Reuters. I am curious as to what an ethical […]
Read more...This could get interesting. The Financial Times tells us that Neil Barofsky, the special investigator general for the TARP, is looking whether banks cooked their books by overvaluing assets to qualify for TARP funding, Remember, bank had to fall into this funny construct of being sick enough to need help, but not so sick as […]
Read more...We’ve mentioned earlier that it was inevitable that China would reduce its purchases of Treasuries, independent of its desire to diversify away from them. With trade falling (although China still has a high surplus) and hot money inflows reversing direction, China has less reason to buy foreign assets. From the New York Times: Reversing its […]
Read more...Submitted by Leo Kolivakis, publisher of Pension Pulse. A follow-up on Friday’s post on what happened to CAW’s pension guarantees. The Globe & Mail’s Andrew Steele writes on the tragic history of GM’s pension: It needs to be said again: The NDP government in Ontario really screwed up when they absolved General Motors of meeting […]
Read more...Tweenbots The Best Minds of My Generation Rortybomb. More on PPIP gaming. Green shoots and tea leaves Paul Krugman G7 Industrial Production Crashing Jesse Hamptons Home Sales Plunge 67% Barry Ritholtz Crisis Altering Wall Street as Big Banks Lose Top Talent New York Times. John Robb beat me to the punchline: Talented grifters leave the […]
Read more...Submitted by Tyler Durden, publisher of Zero Hedge With articles like this coming out of Time magazine, it is inevitable that in the immediate future, the United States will be split into two partisan camps. However, this will not be the traditional schism of republicans vs. democrats, contrary to Mr. Barney Frank’s attempt to start […]
Read more...Ice loss sparks new climate change fears Financial Times Death By the Numbers: Pakistan Counts the Toll of the Bush-Obama Drone War Chris Floyd (hat tip reader Warren) Scrappy Mortgage Blogger Fights Bad Court Ruling Columbia Journalism Review (hat tip reader Barbara) We Have A Right To Rant Susan Lee, Forbes Uptick in Vasectomies Seen […]
Read more...I’m late to this good post from Steve Waldman, which has some provocative ideas about how stringent bankruptcy laws should be. He contends that the current regime is too friendly to creditors, which means they can and do make overly optimistic assumptions about recovery, which in turn makes them too ready to take risks. We’ve […]
Read more...Submitted by Leo Kolivakis, publisher of Pension Pulse. Simon Reid of the Independent writes on why pensions are a girl’s best friend: Shocking figures from the Prudential published this week reveal that women retiring this year will end up with annual pensions worth around one-third less than men. Women will get an average pension of […]
Read more...I have zero sympathy for the kvetching over the banks’ complaints over the supposedly onerous terms for repayment of TARP funds. Let’s review some of the claims: 1. “It was forced on us.” Um, the only time that was arguably true was when Hank Paulson got nine banks together and made a great show of […]
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