Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

SILOs –more action needed?

Tax advantaged “sale-leasebacks” with strapped-for-cash municipalities (SILOs, in the ever-present tax acronym set) came back to light when the Washington Metro train crashed a week ago. The cars were ones that were involved in the metro authority’s SILO deals with various banks, and the authority didn’t have any spare cash left to fund replacements. See […]

Obama Economic Forecast

The right is having a lot of fun commenting about the economic forecast by the Obama team being too optimistic. I guess they are right, Obama along with everyone else has massively underestimated the damage Team Bush did to our economy.

Kennedy-Dodd HELP Bill with CBO Scoring

by Bruce Webb I haven’t gone through the text or the numbers, make of this what you will. But at least we can start with some actual numbers attached.McClatchy: Kennedy-Dodd unveil cheaper health care bill Bill Text: SHORTTITLE.—This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Affordable Health Choices Act” CBO ScoreExcerpts and updates may be added […]

A different sort of crowding out

rdan Money Central presents a dilemma for shareholders in goods and services: The old notion that profitable companies with good growth prospects should have rising share prices — and that failures like GM should be gone, or at least trading in the pennies — is history. Today, a hedge fund investing billions using a quantitative […]

Federal pre-emption of bank regs curtailed by Supreme Court

rdan Seeking Alpha notes a Supreme Court ruling on federal pre-emption of state regulation of banks. Google on Angry Bear OCC for posts on the issue. In a surprising 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court ruled that national banks are still subject to the laws of the states they operate in. What made the ruling unusual […]