A well placed Washington contact wrote: I was in a discussion with the staff at one of the Federal agencies involved in housing to ask them about the new policies on strategic defaults. It became clear almost immediately that regulators obviously have no idea how to identify strategic defaulters except by asking big banks. They […]
Read more...By Wallace C. Turbeville, the former CEO of VMAC LLC and a former Vice President of Goldman, Sachs & Co. who writes at New Deal 2.0 William D. Cohan’s op-ed piece in the July 7th New York Times had the same title as this article, but for the word “Don’t.” At first glance, I thought […]
Read more...One has to be cautious in invoking cultural stereotypes. However, when the subject of defaults or mortgage mods comes up here and in other forums, almost inevitably some readers will start off on a bit of a rant: “I pay my mortgage/rent, why should these people get a break?” And these discussions often take a […]
Read more...The Financial Times had a forward-thinking comment by Richard Florida, director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. It argues that investment in technology and better management can turn many now low end service sector jobs into better paid and higher quality work. One key aspect, which the […]
Read more...By Richard Kline, a Seattle-based polymath and poet 1 Whispers 3 Summering 10 The idea of America is . . . tremendous. Few as good; fewer better. Freedom. Equality. The room to strive. Justice in equal measure. Live and let live, and do harm to none. In our day, it is the execution that is […]
Read more...For those who did not catch wind of it, the Peterson Foundation, which has long had Social Security and Medicare in its crosshairs, held a bizarre set of 19 faux town hall meetings over the previous weekend to scare participants into compliance and then collect the resulting distorted survey data, presumably to use in a […]
Read more...Andy Grove, who lead Intel to dominance of an extremely competitive, risky industry, has a very important opinion piece at Bloomberg (several readers pointed to it, including John M, dr, Crocodile Chuck). He makes a series of points that are the polar opposite of the de facto US industrial policy, of the naive view that […]
Read more...This blog warned a few weeks ago of a coming campaign by the officialdom against so-called “strategic defaulters”. It has arrived even sooner than we expected. We warned that this development was the inevitable result of financial firms, taking an increasingly predatory posture toward their customers. Borrowers are responding in kind, by taking a cold-blooded […]
Read more...Gulf resident and fisherman’s wife Kindra Arnesen took advantage of the offer extended to her to visit cleanup sites and staff meetings: At any rate, I was invited the following week to go behind “enemy lines.” They gave me, of all people, security clearance to go into the base of operations meetings in Venice, Louisiana […]
Read more...By Gonzalo Lira, a novelist and filmmaker (and economist) currently living in Chile and writing at Gonzalo Lira On the occasion of the BP oil spill disaster, President Obama’s delivered an Oval Office speech last night—a masterpiece of milquetoast faux-outrage. The speech was all about “clean energy” and “ending our dependence on fossil fuels”. Faced […]
Read more...The New York Times reports on a monster find of minerals in Afghanistan, some of them strategic (hat tip reader Francois T): The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war […]
Read more...By Bob Goodwin, an investor and medical device entrepreneur who lives in Mercer Island, Washington Ideological groupings of the population are an interesting phenomenon. I believe they are caused by two human traits. People need a mental construct or shortcut to make sense of complex externalities, and likely overuse these constructs. More importantly people are […]
Read more...A good Washington DC contact told me that a public relations/media push to demonize those who decide to walk away from mortgages they can still afford to pay (aka “strategic defaulters”) is underway. Expect to see a good bit of moral fervor as those who choose to cut their losses are attacked as immoral, irresponsible, […]
Read more...A fresh Gallup poll reports that Americans are most worried about….federal debts (hat tip Marshall Auerback via the Atlantic): Gallup also provided a tally of how members of each party view the issue: It would appear the ground has been laid rather effectively for (among other things) an assault on Social Security and Medicare. As […]
Read more...By a retired physician who worked several years in the medical communications and pharmaceutical industry who writes as Francois T Is the federal government really ready to punish those responsible of corporate malfeasance in the pharmaceutical industry? Push hard enough and you are bound to get a push back, even from a slow, at times […]
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