Trying to get beyond today’s headlines, and the moves and countermoves in today’s markets, is difficult. However the future beckons, and it’s looking a lot more “deflationary” than “inflationary” which is the exact reason the Fed is throwing around the power of the “lender of last resort.” Don’t want a Depression, do we? The great […]
Reader sammy sends this link from the WSJ editorials page: Thebest thing about Sunday night’s Federal Reserve-inspired sale of Bear Stearns to J.P. Morgan Chase is the price. At $2 a share for a total of $236 million, this was less a “bailout” than a Fed-mediated liquidation sale. Bear wasn’t too big to fail after […]
On Monday’s 3/17/08 episode Mr. Stephen Colberts to the opportunity in his “The Word” segment to explain the need for confidence in the economy, the declining unemployment rate and the loss of 63,00 jobs. Titled: The Audacity of Hopelessness The blog would not let me embed the video.
“We want to support your American peso with our strong Canadian dollar.”-Pink Eyes, lead singer for the punk band Fu***d Up As we all eagerly await the Fed’s decision on what Fed rate to set today, after taking crud as collateral from Bear Stearns on a non-recourse basis, and opening unlimited lending against further crud […]
…the 4 most dangerous words on wall street are “this time it’s different.” If anyone dealing with securitized mortgages believed that because it was real estate, it would never go bad, they should have been fired long ago; after decades in which the norm has been that housing matches inflation, anyone who believed that this […]
The WSJ online reports the following about our discussion of domestic NSA surveillance: Largely missing from the public discussion is the role of the highly secretive NSA in analyzing that data, collected through little-known arrangements that can blur the lines between domestic and foreign intelligence gathering. Supporters say the NSA is serving as a key […]
Reader JPKK says: JP Morgan Buys a Bear and the Fed Cleans Up the Woods How did Bear Stearns (BSC) go from planning to report decent earnings for the current environment to being hours away from filing? It all comes down to keeping liquid in an illiquid market. Last week starting late Wednesday and through […]
Lifted from comments Brad DeLong style: Reader howard says: The issue is whether Bear Stearns management in the days and weeks leading up to this collapse exercised sufficient due diligence and managerial oversight, whether they should have for seen problems through greater rigor and controls, and whether they should have therefore not ended up in […]
OMB Watch caught this item and reports: After significantly delaying the release of a report that identifies alarming toxic health risks for the Great Lakes region, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is now reportedly planning to release a substantially modified document. Originally, Public Health Implications of Hazardous Substances in Twenty-Six U.S. Great […]
Watch the video of how the last two days unwound.