One of the reasons I haven’t weighed in with the obligatory Lehman five year anniversary piece is that so many of them are variations on a limited range of themes. So it may be more instructive to discuss the stories that it would have been nice to see instead.
Read more...I have to confess that given the length of this panel discussion presented by Better Markets, I’ve looked only at the start, which is quite promising. Given the caliber of the participants, I’m hoping to get to it over the weekend, since it will be a departure from the bromides the MSM seems to be serving up on this anniversary of the Lehman collapse. This talk is oriented towards a discerning audience and offer more insider detail.
Read more...Yves here. This piece provides an intriguing analysis and a lot of detail to support its thesis that Egypt’s inability to generate the income needed to make payments on IMF loans means the country is likely to have its assets stripped.
Read more...Yves here. It is all too easy to goad libertarians, since their ideas are internally conflicted and they get prickly when you point out the flaws in their dogma.
Read more...By Nathan Tankus, a student and research assistant at the University of Ottawa. You can follow him on Twitter at @NathanTankus
Many thousands of words have been spilled explaining just how horrible Lawrence Summers is and how terrible he would be as chair of the Federal Reserve. While this is true, I don’t think enough has been said on the precise ways he would be able to influence policy in a negative way.
Read more...Yesterday, we put up a post on the subject of who won and lost as a result of Obama being cornered into taking up a Russian proposal to destroy Syria’s stockpiles of chemical weapons rather than launch punitive attacks. A Beltway insider weighted in via e-mail with some pointed remarks:
Read more...OMG, too funny!
Read more...This has been a wild afternoon, for a change in a good way.
Read more...The New York Times has one of those “inside” stories that unintentionally demonstrate the collapse of justice and financial reporting. This genre involves the media reporting gravely (and uncritically) the administration’s claims that its failure to prosecute any elite for the largest and most destructive financial frauds in history actually demonstrates the exceptional ethical rectitude of the non-prosecutors and non-enforcers.
Read more...The Administration seems finally to have woken up to the fact that in trying to escalate in Syria, it has bitten off a ton more than it can chew and may have found a climbdown in the form of having Assad destroy his stockpiles of chemical weapons. Russia, Damascus, and the UK are on board with this idea.
Read more...Anyone surprised by the housing recovery is simply blind to the context that the Federal Reserve has administered a bazooka full of aid and comfort over the past few years. They bought up enough mortgage bonds to force interest rates to near-record lows, boosting the fortunes of asset holders. And in so doing they made housing an attractive investment product, bringing lots of Wall Street cash into the REO-to-rental play, at least for a short while. That predictably increased demand and put housing prices on their current trajectory.
Read more...Bill DeBlasio’s ascension in the New York City mayoral primary is something liberals everywhere are supposed to care about (outside the CORRIDOR THAT MEANS EVERYTHING, here in Los Angeles, we just elected our own fairly progressive mayor, Eric Garcetti, two months ago, but I guess it’s only in New York where one example makes a trend). From my perspective, I’m more interested in the Democratic primary for Comptroller, which pits Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer against comeback hopeful Eliot Spitzer. The polls have been wildly divergent: Quinnipiac has over the past week shown a virtual dead heat, while the Marist poll gives Spitzer a double-digit lead. Polling is notoriously difficult in citywide elections generally, and especially for downballot races, so it’s hard to get a full read on this. But Quinnipiac shows a racial divide, with African-American voters going 60% for Spitzer and white voters 60% for Stringer.
Read more...By David Dayen, a lapsed blogger, now a freelance writer based in Los Angeles, CA. Follow him on Twitter @ddayen I don’t know of any clear-eyed analyst who held out much hope that the handover of the Treasury Department from Tim Geithner to Jack Lew would herald a new era of stringent financial regulatory reform. […]
Read more...The Obama Administration is presenting the upcoming Congressional votes on its blank check Authorization to Use Military Force in Syria as justified, irrelevant (since Kerry has asserted that the Administration doesn’t need Congress’ approval can attack even in the face of a no vote), but a done deal nevertheless. None of those claims stand up to scrutiny.
The Fed chairman is the most powerful official Obama will pick— directly affecting each and every wallet in America. As much as anything, this appointment will shape our country’s future.
Obama appears to want Summers, and so do the most powerful people on Wall Street. But he is not the people’s choic
Read more...