Prairie dogs have a language all of their own and ‘can describe what humans look like’ Daily Mail (hat tip reader May S)
Two forms of world’s ‘newest’ cat, the Sunda leopard BBC (hat tip reader John M)
Bye Bye Blackbird: USDA acknowledges a hand in one mass bird death Christian Science Monitor (hat tip reader furzy mouse)
Yellowstone Has Bulged as Magma Pocket Swells National Geographic (hat tip reader John M). So why no disaster movie about this yet?
Read more...What’s a Bigger Draw Than a Camel Fight? A Camel Beauty Contest, of Course Wall Street Journal. The WSJ is at least a year late to take note of camel beauty contests.
Solar car speed record smashed Cosmos
NYT: “You Think Houses Are a Slow Sell? Try a Yacht” Credit Bubble Stocks
Economics of Toilet Seat Etiquette Paul Kedrosky. I want to know how he finds these studies. And you can tell the author of this one was male. If I have to explain further, you (along with this author) need remedial education. Hint: the author have missed a huge gender asymmetry in his cost analysis.
Read more...One of the striking features of China’s continuing growth as an economic power is its extreme (as in unprecedented in the modern era) dependence on exports and investments as drivers of growth. Even more troubling is that as expansion continues, consumption keeps falling as a percentage of GDP.
As countries become more affluent, consumption tends to rise in relationship to GDP. And the ample evidence of colossally unproductive infrastructure projects in China (grossly underoccupied malls, office and residential buildings, even cities) raises further doubts about the sustainability of the Chinese economic model.
The post crisis loan growth in China, in tandem with visible signs that a meaningful proportion of it has little future economic value, has stoked worries that Chinese banks will soon be struggling with non-performing loans. China bulls scoff at this view, contending that China’s 2002-2004 episode of non-performing loans was cleaned up with little fuss (I never bought that story and recall how Ernst and Young was basically bullied by the Chinese government into withdrawing a 2006 report that NPLs at Chinese banks were a stunning 46% of total assets of its four largest banks. Note estimates of the NPLs as a percent of total loans from that crisis vary widely, even excluding Ernst, from 20% to 40%).
The latest post by Michael Pettis links the two phenomena, the fall in Chinese consumption and the cleanup of its last banking crisis. If his analysis is correct, this bodes ill for any correction in global imbalances.
Read more...In October, Lender Processing Servicer was targeted in two lawsuits, one filed in Federal bankruptcy court, both alleging illegal sharing of legal fees. The Federal suit sought class action status and was joined shortly thereafter by the Chapter 13 bankruptcy trustee for Northern Mississippi on behalf of herself and all other US Chapter 13 bankruptcy trustees as a class.
Lender Processing Services dismissed the suit as a “fishing expedition“. Funny, it appears the judge does not agree. I hope to get a transcript of the hearing on Friday, since he authorized the case against both firms moving into discovery and from what I understand, not on a very narrow basis as both defendants had sought.
If successful, this litigation would do tremendous damage to LPS.
Read more...Jesse gave us a generous comment on his blog yesterday:
Read more...Why people care about these sorts of things puzzles me but here goes…
I do keep a select set of books next to my chair for reading in the late and quiet hours of the evening after all the family is put to bed, the doors locked, and the windows closed.
From this I am re-reading sections of Econned by Yves Smith which is an awesome work about the financial crisis and its roots. If you do nothing else read the introduction thoroughly and you will know more about the financial crisis than most. I rarely read the same book twice unless it has real substance.
Oh boy, if you think the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decision on Ibanez, which raised serious questions about the validity of transfers in mortgage securitizations, turned heads in the banking industry, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. The SJC is considering what has the potential to be another widely-watched case, Bevilacqua v. Rodriguez. Note this case […]
Read more...By Matt Stoller, the former Senior Policy Advisor for Rep. Alan Grayson. His Twitter feed is @matthewstoller
The Federal Open Market Committee releases its transcripts on a five year time lag. Last week, we learned what they were saying in 2005. Dylan Ratigan blogged an interesting catch: Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher expressed his frustration about Chinese imports. Not, of course, that there were too many imports, but that our ports weren’t big enough to allow all the outsourcing American CEOs wanted.
Read more...Fisher is just the latest Fed official to applaud this trend. Here’s the backstory. In the 1970s, there was a lot of inflation. The oligarchs of the time didn’t like this, because it made their portfolios worth less money. So they decided they would clamp down on inflation by no longer allowing wage increases. To get the goods they needed without a high wage work force, they would ship in everything they needed from East Asia and Mexico. The strategy worked. Inflation collapsed. Wages stopped going up. There were no more strikes. Unemployment jumped….But basically this was a way of ensuring that banks and creditors could make a lot of money that would instead go to workers.
Birds post ‘no trespassing’ signs BBC
Deep sea fission World Nuclear News
Found: Lost Pictures of New York Blizzard YouTube (hat tip reader Scott A)
Read more...Earlier this week, we discussed how several measures proposed in Virginia would have the effect of redressing the power imbalance between banks and borrowers in the foreclosure process. One would give borrowers more time to mount defensed (Virginia has one of the fastest track processes in the US); another would require judicial approval for a foreclosure to become final. But the farthest-reaching proposal would force banks to maintain accurate property records in local government offices, which would end the use of MERS in that state.
Not surprisingly, the industry is not about to let this go down without a fight.
Read more...Unused lines of credit commitments of banks to U.S. business have declined from $92 billion in December 2007 to just $24 billion as of September 2010.
Read more...Even as we and other commentators have noted the underlying weakness of major bank balance sheets, which have been propped up by asset-price-flattering super low interest rates and regulatory forbearance, we still witness the unseemly spectacle of major banks keen to leverage up again. The current ruse is raising dividends to shareholders, a move the Fed seems likely to approve. Anat Admati reminded us in the Financial Times on Wednesday that we are about to repeat the mistakes of the crisis:
Read more...Last week, I caught some very good commentary by a number of well-known financial industry experts. I wanted to share my own thoughts with you on their commentary, especially in light of my posts at Credit Writedowns on Eisenhower’s Farewell Address and The New Monetary Consensus. I had featured two of the commentaries at CW, from Roach and Faber. I will add a bit from Gross and Grantham and try to unify them into a single theme regarding corporatism and the sustainability of this upturn.
Read more...Thanks for your kind comments yesterday. Still under the weather but seem to be on the mend, had to postpone a flight till today, so travel will also thin my posting a bit. What, Me Care? Young Are Less Empathetic Scientific American (hat tip reader Patrick F) More storms ahead for flood-ravaged Queensland ABC (hat […]
Read more...In the last week, several ideas for fixing the housing market have surfaced. One is the Third Way proposal, which appears to be an Administration trial balloon. Predictably, it is yet anther bailout, with plenty of smoke and mirrors to disguise that fact.
A second proposal, from Sheila Bair yesterday, is to establish a “foreclosure claims commission“. This scheme sounds more promising that the Third Way proposal, but is very likely to wind up in bailout territory.
Third is a not-widely-covered plan by Senator Jeff Merkley.
The Merkley proposal is pro consumer and pro investor; the other two are pro bank. Sadly, it isn’t hard to see which is likely to prevail in the absence of public pressure.
Read more...This is starting to get interesting. Having achieved the creation of special courts to whittle down a backlog of foreclosures, called the “rocket docket” due to the propensity of many of its judges to operate on an accelerated timetable that too often led to a refusal to hear borrower objections and evidence, servicers are now withdrawing foreclosure cases in Southwest Florida en masse.
It is not yet clear whether these cases are being abandoned or whether the banks will refile once they find a way to argue their action is valid. However, reading between the lines, one has to question whether they will succeed.
Read more...