Pollution link with birth weight BBC You should probably know that the U.S. currency is now backed by risky assets News N Economics A Game of Credit Cost Smoke at Mirrors at Wells Fargo? Housing Wire Still Few Buyers in Fed’s Effort to Restart Lending Time S&P 500 50-Day Moving Average Spread Bespoke Investment Group […]
Read more...Rasmussen just released the results of a recent poll on political attitudes. It found only 53% clearly preferred capitalism (hat tip reader David H): Only 53% of American adults believe capitalism is better than socialism. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 20% disagree and say socialism is better. Twenty-seven percent (27%) are […]
Read more...Submitted by Leo Kolivakis, publisher of Pension Pulse. As a follow-up to my last post on checkmate for pensions, the FT reports that the collapse in value of US state and local government pension plans is a disastrous double blow for them: They are being forced to sell off assets at huge discounts to pay […]
Read more...Obama looks at climate engineering Associated Press A.P. Exec Doesn’t Know It Has A YouTube Channel: Threatens Affiliate For Embedding Videos TechCrunch (hat tip reader Michael) He has four wives and he faced 783 counts of corruption Globe and Mail (hat tip reader Gary). No, it’s not about anyone from the Bush or Obama circles. […]
Read more...Should this even qualify as news? From the New York Times: For the last eight weeks, nearly 200 federal examiners have labored inside some of the nation’s biggest banks to determine how those institutions would hold up if the recession deepened. What they are discovering may come as a relief to both the financial industry […]
Read more...I have noticed a deterioration in the quality of comments in the last month or so. While mean spirited, intellectually bankrupt remarks used to be rare, they are now occurring more than occasionally. And the number of ad hominem attacks, both on other readers and post authors, has also increased. Although I am not reading […]
Read more...Submitted by Rolfe Winkler, publisher of OptionARMageddon The Congressional Oversight Panel released its latest report yesterday. Luckily news outlets reporting on the release (see Bloomberg and Housing Wire) are skipping Warren’s YouTube and Executive summaries–awkward exercises in establishing consensus both of them. They focus instead on the report’s more provocative suggestion, that liquidating failed banks […]
Read more...Chimpanzees exchange meat for sex BBC (hat tip reader Steve L) Why every office needs a Dwight Schrute Globe and Mail Investment losses hit public sector pensions Financial Times Market bear Roubini sticks to dour forecasts Reuters Fed’s Fisher says U.S. economy grim Reuters Vacancies at U.S. Retail Centers Hit 10-Year High, Reis Says Bloomberg […]
Read more...Willem Buiter takes no prisoners, In his latest post, “The green shoots are weeds growing through the rubble in the ruins of the global economy”, he dispatches the idea that recovery is around the corner (citing Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth’s latest paper on the resolution of financial crises) and points out that the fiscal state […]
Read more...The way things are going, the US taxpayer is going to be backstopping every bond buyer in the US. The latest wrinkle is that the TARP will be extended to “certain eligible” life insurers. The report at the Wall Street Journal is skeletal: The Treasury Department plans to extend the Troubled Asset Relief Program to […]
Read more...Submitted by Leo Kolivakis, publisher of Pension Pulse. The FT reports that investment losses hit public sector pensions: The crisis facing pension plans for US state and municipal employees is deepening as investment losses deplete the resources of retirement funds for teachers, police officers, firefighters and other local government workers. The largest state and municipal […]
Read more...We have been saying for some time that the policy premise of the Fed and Treasury has been that the financial crisis is that it is a liquidity crisis, not a solvency crisis. If you are of that school, the fallen prices of various assets is due to a combination of scarcity of funding plus […]
Read more...Given the deterioration in local tax bases, it may seem surprising this Moody’s negative outlook for states and municipalities wasn’t issued earlier. However, this is the first time that the rating agency has provided a warning across a class of borrowers. However, despite the grim tone, in fact municipal borrowers (save industrial revenue bonds, in […]
Read more...Australian canine castaway found BBC Nine Words You Might Think Came from Science but Which Are Really from Science Fiction OUPblog International terrorism and the escalation effect Nauro F. Campos and Martin Gassebner, VoxEU Polar Ice Cap Shrinks Further and Thins Wall Street Journal Communities print their own currency to keep cash flowing USA Today […]
Read more...Barry Eichengreen, an expert on the Great Depression, and Kevin O’Rourke, take issue with the notion that the current downturn is less severe than the Great Depression. While the slump in the US is not as bad, that mis-states the global picture. Note that many economists expect the US to suffer less than the big […]
Read more...