Did we say really? Even by the normal standards of Roubini’s tendency to hyperventilate state his case forcefully, the good professor rises to levels of choler heretofore unseen. Roubini focuses on many of the issues we have discussed in our earlier posts (most notably this one) but he teases out some of the issues in […]
Read more...For a quick, one-stop synopsis of the Mother of All Bailouts (as of this month), see this readable version at Clusterstock (we’ve become a recent convert to this site). Reader and sometimes contributor Lune, who was once a Congressional staffer and still subscribes to the the inside-the-Beltway press, provided a wrap of their coverage of […]
Read more...See here, sports fans. At least it isn’t three pages long any more. I haven’t gotten past noting that it is a “discussion draft”. Hope to have more substantive comments in due order. The Troubled Assets are initially limited to commercial and residential mortgages and instruments based on them. The Treasury has to go to […]
Read more...Apparently there has been a pretty weird announcement. Progress is being made to sound like resolution. Since the House Republicans weren’t part of the photo op, it isn’t at all clear whether this is real. First sighting from Clusterstock, will add updates as they come in: Update (12:35 a.m.): Nancy Pelosi speaks first. She says […]
Read more...The mainstream media, giving reports from Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi, who said last week there was a bailout deal imminent, are giving similar chipper reports of progress with appropriate caveats. From the New York Times, “Consensus on Rescue Plan Is Said to Be Near“: After a tumultuous week, including a contentious meeting at the […]
Read more...The quote above comes from Robert Bennett (Senate, R-Utah) and while no doubt narrowly true (presumably it’s Wachovia), implying that the bank will go under due to the failure to implement the Paulson plan is just plain dishonest. The bank has been wobbly for a very long time and t isn’t at all clear that […]
Read more...Some readers would have a go at me whenever I’d post articles by the Telegraph’s Ambrose Evans-Pritchard. Although he has a tendency to hyperventilate and sometimes oversimplifies, he regularly points to data and research that I haven’t seen covered elsewhere. More important, his major calls this year have been correct. He predicted the oil price […]
Read more...From Forbes (hat tip reader The Social Pathologist): In fact, some of the most basic details, including the $700 billion figure Treasury would use to buy up bad debt, are fuzzy. “It’s not based on any particular data point,” a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. “We just wanted to choose a really large number.”
Read more...This is a departure from our usual programming, but we considered it to be worthy of your attention. From Asia Times (hat tip reader Cash Mundy): A group of hardline United States neo-conservatives and former Israeli diplomats were behind the controversial, allegedly Islamaphobic DVD which was recently distributed in US swing states ahead of November’s […]
Read more...The unravelling that started with the Freddie and Fannie conservatorship has exacted a toll not just on dollar-denominated paper but on financial assets around the world. As they have fallen, so too has the standing of the US, which zealously promoted liberalized capital markets and saw US firms establish dominant positions when those rules were […]
Read more...Readers Dean and Dwight wrote to tell me that CNBC is reporting that Senator Shelby (R-Alabama, and the ranking member of the Senate Banking Committed) came out of the White House waving the University of Chicago organized letter from economists objecting to the plan and said there was no agreement. Given the apparent momentum to […]
Read more...As James Galbraith points out in today’s Washington Post (hat tip reader Marshall), the Paulson bailout plan wasn’t necessary, and any rescue could have been handled by expanding existing programs: Now that all five big investment banks — Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley — have disappeared or morphed into […]
Read more...From the Washington Post: House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) said the bailout deal reached by key lawmakers calls for dividing the $700 billion pricetag into three parts: Paulson would receive $250 billion immediately and another $100 billion upon White House certification of its necessity. The final $350 billion could be dispersed without […]
Read more...While we have focused on the fact that the Treasury bailout plan, which with some tweaks, is moving towards approval. is a covert and inefficient recapitalization of the banking system, other observers see another goal for the plan. The contend that its main purpose is to circumvent mark-to-market accounting. The belief is that mark to […]
Read more...While there have been various reports during the day that a version 2.0 of the Treasury bailout bill was moving towards passage, the agreement in principle now appears to be official. From the Wall Street Journal: A bipartisan group of House and Senate lawmakers left a two-hour-plus meeting in the U.S. Capitol on Thursday saying […]
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