Even though the news media are generally focusing on the “progress is being made” aspects of the Hurricane Sandy aftermath (in large measure because that’s what officials are pushing), there is still a great deal of distress, as well as probable long-lingering problems that are not being acknowledged.
Read more...Tonight’s Financial Times has a eye-popping story, that the survival of Sharp, one of Japan’s top consumer products manufacturers, is in doubt:
Read more...As a result of fully warranted bad press for some privatization deals, such as the lease of Chicago’s parking meters, there has been a bit (stress only a bit) more critical scrutiny of the de facto sale of public assets to consortia of private investors. Nevertheless, major banks have been using the financial distress of states and municipalities to push these deals as a solution to budget woes, when it’s a short-term expedient that leaves the public worse off.
Read more...With Hurricane Sandy dominating the news, quite a few business stories from early in the week got only cursory notice. In some ways, that’s not a bad thing.
The Wall Street Journal had a bizarre sequence of reports on Jon Corzine.
Read more...Yves here. I’m featuring the key portion of a post by Varoufakis, which is his rough reconstruction of the conclusion of an unscripted talk before the Caledonian Club in London on “Global and European Recovery: What Will it Take?”
Read more...The tone of media reports is that things are getting better after the storm, which is no doubt largely true, but there are still a lot of people in distress and discomfort.
Read more...Around the anniversary of the official birth of Occupy Wall Street, a host of bank affiliated financial reporters used the occasion to designate the movement a failure in surprisingly strident terms. Why the need to kick a dead horse?
Read more...By Michael Olenick, creator of NASTIACO, a crowd sourced foreclosure document review system (still in alpha). You can follow him on Twitter at @michael_olenick or read his blog, Seeing Through Data
There’s a strong argument that the competing goals of HERA, minimizing loss while promoting affordable housing, are impossible. But doing the opposite, increasing losses while discouraging affordable housing, is even harder, yet Fannie has done that.
Read more...The aftermath of Hurricane Sandy looks to be a soggy, protracted, costly affair.
Read more...The spectacle of failure being rewarded during the financial crisis while the rest of us suffered in the resulting economic downdraft has led even people who are cautious about regulation in goods markets to acknowledge that finance is different and needs vigilant oversight. The fact that Elizabeth Warren took her job as the head of the Congressional Oversight Panel seriously produced a huge win for the public. And that is the sort of thing you’d expect if we had more tough-minded regulators in place.
Read more...By Bill Black, the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One and an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City
Obama intends to begin to unravel the safety net (Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid) to convince the Republicans to enter into this Faustian bargain. Just as only a conservative Republican could visit “Red” China, only a Democrat can begin the destruction of the safety net. The difference, of course, is that normalizing relations with China was a good thing while unraveling the safety net is a terrible thing.
Read more...It’s peculiar to have been in the midst of the superstorm and have suffered pretty much nada in the way of immediate effects.
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