This in tonight’s Wall Street Journal, “Narrower Targets Set for Health Overhaul“: As Democrats regroup on plans to overhaul the health-care system after a Republican win in last week’s Massachusetts Senate election, comments Sunday indicated that any revamped legislation would likely focus on the least-controversial elements of earlier proposals. White House officials notably didn’t emphasize […]
Read more...OK sports fans, I’m old school. When I grew up, the uptick rule was in place, and no one seemed troubled by it. The uptick rule simply means that a short sale can be executed only when the last sale of a stock is at a higher price than the immediately preceding sale. It was […]
Read more...The New York Times describes today (hat tip reader Peter A) how more and more Senators are voicing public opposition to a confirmation of a second term for Bernanke: The confirmation of Ben S. Bernanke to a second four-year term as chairman of the Federal Reserve ran into further trouble on Friday as two more […]
Read more...By Thomas Adams, an attorney and former monoline executive, and Yves Smith In September 2008, the Federal Reserve bailed out AIG, and ever since then, controversy has swirled around the motivation and terms of the bailout. A major part of the bailout funds went directly to three banks: Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, and the French […]
Read more...By Thomas Adams, an attorney and former monoline executive, and Yves Smith Our accompanying post at Naked Capitalism describes, at a high level of abstraction, a data compilation and analysis that shows that a substantial majority of the transactions in Maiden Lane III are in the public domain. These transactions have long been a focus […]
Read more...Bloomberg reports that Obama will announce provisions to limit the proprietary trading activities of banks. This all sounds well and good, in fact, I’ve advocated prohibiting prop trading (you’d need pretty active monitoring of overnight positions to make sure it has not simply been moved back to order flow desks). It is not a socially […]
Read more...Gee, Warren Buffett happens to own a chunk of Wells Fargo, and also provided an equity injection to Goldman Sachs. So it should come as no surprise that he has come out in a Bloomberg interview arguing against the so-called TARP fee, a charge to be levied against the non-deposit liabilities of large banks. Now […]
Read more...By Marshall Auerback, a fund manager and investment strategist who writes for New Deal 2.0. The post-mortems following the Massachusetts Senate by-election are coming in fast and furiously, but by far the most instructive remarks come from the President himself. He clearly doesn’t get it. A majority of Obama voters who switched to Brown said […]
Read more...By Edward Harrison of Credit Writedowns The Democratic defeat in yesterday’s Massachusetts Senate race puts a punctuation mark on the grinding erosion of support for the Obama Administration and its economic policy in a tough first year. Clearly voters were sending the Administration a message that America is on the wrong course with Obama’s poll […]
Read more...The seemingly-certain loss of a Democratic Senate in Massachusetts today, that formerly held by Ted Kennedy, and with it, a filibuster-proof majority, is purported by Politico to be rousing Obama to a new “combative” stance. But combative is so far from what helped Obama get where he is that his reflexes will be, as they […]
Read more...Harper’s reports today that three detainee deaths at Guantanamo in 2006 that the officialdom has long insisted were suicides were instead likely homicides, and that the military has engaged in a cover-up. Some extracts: ….new evidence now emerging may entangle Obama’s young administration with crimes that occurred during the Bush presidency, evidence that suggests the […]
Read more...The brazenness of the financial services industry knows no bounds. The latest sighting comes in the form of a leak (or a plant? of the fact that Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association which is considering mounting a constitutional challenge to the proposed TARP fee of 15 basis points of uninsured liabilities announced last week. […]
Read more...Yves here. Several readers wrote, appalled by a Time Magazine article defending Timothy Geithner. Marshall Auerback took it upon himself to examine the quality of its reasoning. By Marshall Auerback, a fund manager and investment strategist who writes for New Deal 2.0. It was only a matter of time before someone emerged to defend Tim […]
Read more...Before you dismiss the headline as nutty, at least one respected macroeconomist and former central banker, and now chief economist of Citigroup is of the view that England is at risk of a currency crisis. He noted last November: With the pound sterling dropping like a stone against most other currencies and credit default swap […]
Read more...Today, Obama said to the banking industry, “We want our money back and we’re going to get it.” Has he forgotten that possession is nine-tenths of the law? While Uncle Sam is normally able to defeat such long odds, all bets are off with our “Speak moderately and carry no stick” President. The fact that […]
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