We already gave them $900 Billion. (Or, as I would prefer to write it, just so everyone understands: $900,000,000,000. About 3,000 a person, or 26.7% of the annual median household income, assuming a family of four.) What would makes anyone think another $700,000,000,000 will solve the problem? Just because “sooner or later, you’re talking about […]

At a high level, Floyd Norris explains it all to you. UDATED, AND PULLED TO THE FORE: For the more detailed view (h/t Barry R.), the soon to be late, not very lamented, New York Sun presents the details: The SEC allowed five firms — the three that have collapsed plus Goldman Sachs and Morgan […]

I believe that’s the English translation of this headline.

UPDATE: Krugman comes to the same conclusions, more concisely. (That’s why he gets paid the big bucks.) And Brad DeLong has modified his original position to the point where it’s got a good chance of working going forward. I started a “What is an Asset” post yesterday, which got sidetracked by Brad DeLong’s urging that […]

My Loyal Reader sends another example of those glorious, worthy individuals about whom “we do not have time” to worry: Former [AIG] Chief Executive Officer Maurice “Hank” Greenberg may try to end government involvement in the company “as prompt [sic] as possible,” his attorney David Boies said in an interview this week. Greenberg…has said the […]

I like Brad DeLong, conceptually. Even his errors in judgment are based on rational principles. And he has a really useful piece up right now about “dealing with financial crises.” (One of the nice things about it is that it also completely undermines his earlier suggestion that the Fed was wrong not to ease on […]

Documentation of a minor disruption: Lehman won’t return “billions” of frozen prime-brokerage assets “in the short term,” said PricewaterhouseCoopers, administrator for the Lehman bankruptcy. Meanwhile, several hedge funds are planning to sing the Bono phrase from “Do They Know It’s Xmastime?”* to their cohorts at Morgan Stanley: Hedge funds that account for less than 10 […]

Wick Allison, editor-in-chief of D Magazine and who succeeded William Rusher as the publisher of the National Review says what I’ve been saying for months about Barack Obama. But those don’t matter as much as what Obama offers, which is a deeply conservative view of the world. He continues: Nobody can read Obama’s books (which, […]

If Barclay’s had bought Lehman over last weekend, would the Fed still have (needed to) intervened in the case of AIG? Discuss amongst yourselves.

Kathryn finds a gem. (title ref)