Category Archives: remainders

Four questions for Tim Geithner: To add to my one. Obama’s shout-out to John Maynard Keynes: Who was no rhetorical slouch himself. Roubini Predicts U.S. Losses May Reach $3.6 Trillion Saudi’s Kingdom Holding posts $8.3 bln Q4 loss French carmakers … Continue reading →

How Obama Really Won the Election: Nate Silver says it was all about the cities. The Bad News: Is Obama’s presidency doomed before it even starts? Cost of Borrowing Zooms Up for Corporations: Nabors, for instance, just issued 10-year debt … Continue reading →

OECD says EU Should Consider Single Financial Supervisor Citigroup Plans to Sell Japanese Brokerage: An abrupt volte-face, especially considering how recently they bought it. Russia and Ukraine Reach Deal on Gas Interest Rate Drop Has Dire Results for Legal Aid: … Continue reading →

Expand transfers, not credit: Steve Waldman on why "we ought to phase out banks as we’ve known them since before Bagehot’s time". Flat N All That: The best part of Thomas Friedman coming out with a new book is that … Continue reading →

The Leveling of Citigroup: A wonderful, must-read brief history of Citigroup from a former insider. What a way to succed in leveling the playing field! "The playing field is now level. Bear Sterns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, and Citi have … Continue reading →

Go public? What is Steel Partners thinking? It does seem like a most peculiar time for a hedge fund to go public. Performance related pay for teachers: a dialectic: "Hypothesis: Teachers object to performance-related pay so strenuously precisely because they … Continue reading →

Brazil’s economic turndown in one easy-to-understand chart: When emerging markets collapse. New York Mag to Writers: You’re Keeping Your Jobs, Getting a Pay Cut: So much for sticky wages. Scared Yet? Chait on WSJ scare quotes. "A mundane fact–say, Paul … Continue reading →

Wine Auctions Become a Buyer’s Market: Hope springs eternal. "The one thing that the world has proven to us is that when things go down, they only go up higher than ever before." Student auctions off virginity for offers of … Continue reading →

Why You’ll Love Paying for Roads That Used to Be Free Accountability Time: James Kwak on Warren vs Treasury. Call It Hurricane Alan: Bush "still seems to view the financial crisis as an act of God — and thus to … Continue reading →

Accountability for the Troubled Asset Relief Program: The second Warren report (pdf). Nationwide Inquiry on Bids for Municipal Bonds: It’s always been a very sleazy backwater of finance, and it’s good to see it getting its comeuppance. A very good … Continue reading →

Citi, Senators Reach Mortgage Deal: It’s sad but necessary that the banks need to sign on to any plan which allows mortgages to get included in bankruptcy proceedings. It’s promising that Citi has done so. The 12 Most Important Cars … Continue reading →

Know When To Hold ‘Em: Why the FDIC shouldn’t have sold IndyMac. PIMCO says too early to buy emerging markets: In Asia, at least. Probability, VIX, Bad Math, and Reporters Who Don’t Know the Difference: How the VIX massively overestimated … Continue reading →

How to tackle foreclosures and unemployment at the same time: Get some desperately-needed empirical data on loan mods. Doing the Math to Find the Good Jobs: Mathematicians have the top three best jobs. Economists are in 11th place, just ahead … Continue reading →

The myth of the riskometer: "The lessons have not been learned. Risk sensitivity is expected to play a key role both in the future regulatory system and new areas such as executive compensation." Fighting Off Depression: Krugman warns that "this … Continue reading →

The End of the Financial World as We Know It: Part 1, Part 2. Lewis and Einhorn are right; it’ll be interesting to see whether Tim Geithner moves in the direction they suggest. Risk Mismanagement: Nocera on VaR. A second … Continue reading →

Three Banks Complete Deals: BofA’s acquisition of Merrill Lynch has now closed; so has Wells Fargo’s acquisition of Wachovia. That sigh of relief you’re hearing is coming from arbitrageurs who were long MER and WB. Relitigating 1998 at the end … Continue reading →

A Crack in The System: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 of the Washington Post’s monster series on AIG Financial Products. Did those people at AIG not understand anything about financial risk? AIG actually quantified its tail risk, yet … Continue reading →

$75 Billion Needlessly Lost in Hasty Lehman Bankruptcy Filing? Yves Smith debunks. Tyler Cowen, Paul Krugman, and the right time to have a financial crisis: Justin Fox adjudicates; Mark Thoma and Barbara Kiviat add commentary. Is There Really a Credit … Continue reading →

More on Existing Home Sales: Some great charts from CR. How Much Has Harvard Really Lost? As much as half its total endowment, according to one anonymous source. Latvia is the new Argentina: Reform without devaluation can only end in … Continue reading →

Money market funds reel as yields near zero How India Avoided a Crisis: Nocera on the Reserve Bank of India’s YV Reddy. The Shill Owns Up: Lereah’s very bearish. Fool Him Twice: Jerome Fisher: Yet more evidence that successful entrepeneurs … Continue reading →

Madoff Teaches Lessons in Due Diligence: Donald Trump on Bernie Madoff: "Just because someone is well established doesn’t mean they’re not above being a total crook." Madoff Scandal Parallels 1905 Play: Me, on NPR, talking Mamet and Madoff. And finally, … Continue reading →

Hedge funds gain access to $200bn Fed aid: If they buy securitized consumer loans. I want to be a cockroach: Why many companies may be doomed. How Long Has This Been Going On? "It’s simply amazing how much of what … Continue reading →

The World’s Largest Hedge Fund is a Fraud: Harry Markopolos in 2005. Vilsack: Big Agriculture has a man in the White House: Which is probably a good thing, biotechnology-wise, but a bad thing, ethanol-wise. Hope Grows for a Taiwan Chipmaker … Continue reading →

Brilliant: Credit Suisse To Pay Top Execs With Illiquid Mortgage Securities: It really is an astonishingly good idea. This one Goes to Eleven: "It doesn’t make a lot of sense to look for the X,Y,Z ’causes’ of the crash because … Continue reading →

Can She Save the S.E.C.? Norris on Schapiro. "If anyone can force a merger of the S.E.C. and the C.F.T.C., she can." Henry Paulson: Justin Fox’s spot-on profile. Chasing Bernard Madoff: The WSJ on Harry Markopolos. See also the Boston … Continue reading →