Dean Baker, a couple of days ago at Huffington Post, called on readers to go to Chicago to participate in peaceful protests during the annual meetings of the American Bankers Association on October 25 to 27. A coalition of community, labor, and consumer groups are organizing this “Showdown in Chicago.” If you saw Michael Moore’s […]
Read more...An interesting contract in reporting today. Reader (Tom C) sent me the Wall Street Journal version of this story, by Michael R. Crittenden and Liam Pleven, titled “AIG Execs Returned Only $19M Of $45M In Pledged Repayments.” I decided to look at Bloomberg as well, as found one on the same subject, “AIG Should Trim […]
Read more...In the early days of this blog, I would often wind up comparing coverage of news between the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal because the offender (almost without exception the Journal) had done a job so poor or misleading that it merited comment. Then the credit crisis forced the Journal to up its […]
Read more...The Financial Times reports that the so-called pay czar Kenneth Feinberg, who is in charge of overseeing compensation at TARP recipients, is going to crack down on some of the bonuses paid at AIG: The Obama administration’s pay tsar has indicated he will take a tough stance on executive pay at AIG, the state-controlled insurance […]
Read more...I have a weakness for seeing movies in theaters; the home variety, even with the super large screens, is just not the same. And it has been so long since I have seen a movie that all the trailers looked good to me (well, I must confess I like trailers. The tacky soda and car […]
Read more...Whoops, that was the old brand, and it was to be led by Japan. The results were less than happy since Japan was not prepared to take “no” for an answer. But this time around, necessity as well as opportunity are leading China, Japan, and Korea to discuss moving forward on closer economic ties. In […]
Read more...The famed hedge fund investor George Soros has decided to make a serious push into clean energy, not only investing in projects but also forming an organization to weigh in on policy issues. From Bloomberg: Billionaire George Soros, looking to address the “political problem” of climate change, said he will invest $1 billion in clean-energy […]
Read more...I was certain I was either reading an Onion headline or had woken up in an alternative reality when I learned that Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Huh? Even Obama had the good sense to say he didn’t deserve it: This morning, Michelle and I awoke to some surprising and humbling news. At […]
Read more...The New York Times has an article about the woes at the FHA which has enough omissions of relevant history so as to render it misleading at points. Mind you, the main message of the story is sound, namely, that the FHA, long a mainstay of lower-income housing, is suffering increasing losses, because it has […]
Read more...An unannounced but evidently coordinated effort to arrest or at least slow the fall of the dollar is underway. The Financial Times indicated that Asian central banks were aggressive dollar buyers on Thursday, but the information came via currency traders rather than an official pronouncement. Thailand, Malaysia and Taiwan made substantial purchases; Hong Kong and […]
Read more...You cannot make this stuff up. The Saudis are lobbying for foreign aid in anticipation of declining oil revenues. Hat tip reader Michael: Saudi Arabia has led a quiet campaign….demanding behind closed doors that oil-producing nations get special financial assistance if a new climate pact calls for substantial reductions in the use of fossil fuels. […]
Read more...When Jim Rogers taught classes at Columbia, he liked to tell students that the US had a proud history of implementing capital controls, and warned them against going on the merry assumption that it would ever and always be easy to make cross-border investments. For instance, taxes on foreign securities transactins are a soft form […]
Read more...When markets were more agitated than they are today, one source of background worry was the Baltics. The countries went on a debt binge, borrowing heavily from Swedish banks. And while the amounts at issue are hardly earth-shaking by credit crisis standards, there is always the possibility that unexpected knock-on effects could lead to more […]
Read more...Wells Fargo is hardly alone in treating credit card customers badly. Whenever I run a post on credit cards, I get a raft of comments and e-mails about various bank misdeeds, which generally involve rate increases when the borrower is current and has not suffered a fall in his credit score. The other common complaint […]
Read more...The New York Times has a good update on the progress, or more accurately, lack thereof, in the efforts to return to normalcy in the credit markets. The story highlights the fact that the securitization markets, to the extent they are operating, are heavily dependent on government intervention and it does not appear likely that […]
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