Category Archives: remainders

Yale President Richard Levin Letter on the Yale Endowment: A pitch-perfect, unpanicked reaction to the endowment’s decline. Continuing woes of FT.com: Alphaville was so broken today it had to move to Facebook. Robust, thorough due diligence is off: The evolution … Continue reading →

Profitable Until Deemed Illegal: "About as close to pure, distilled evil in a business plan as I’ve ever seen." A Pennsylvania Save, Funded by Tarp: TARP saves 9,000 jobs! There, that was surely worth $350 billion. Fairfield Greenwich Group: We … Continue reading →

The Stock Market Still Hopes For a Bailout: I think Jim’s right and I was wrong on this one: the stock market is pricing in a TARP bailout for Detroit. Obama’s pick to solve the energy crisis Magicians And Mathematicians: … Continue reading →

Paul Krugman’s Nobel Prize Lecture: Maybe you can get the video to work, I can’t. Shareholder Value: US companies, since Q4 2004, have returned more money to shareholders than they’ve actually made. $73 an Hour: Adding It Up: "Labor costs, … Continue reading →

Three-Month Bill Yield Goes Negative: I guess the credit crisis ain’t over yet. Liquidity, Default, Risk: Brad DeLong on where the money went. Waldmann comments. Infrastructure: Roads and The Smart Grid: Where infrastructure money should, and shouldn’t, be spent. Deep … Continue reading →

The stock market’s 1930s-style behavior: "It’s awfully hard to say at the moment what shares in publicly traded corporations, especially financial corporations, might be worth. A lot of them might be worth nothing at all. So it really shouldn’t be … Continue reading →

Port Authority: You overconfidence is your weakness Fleckenstein Shutting Down Short Hedge Fund Costco: "The kid’s sitting in the cart, and she sees a guy carrying a 19" flatscreen, and she goes, ‘Look! He has a tiny one!’ and the … Continue reading →

Bank of America’s Merrill Takeover May Be Tough Deal: Great quote on Ken Lewis: "The companies he’s been acquiring all make sense strategically, but the timing and price almost always seems to be off." Trump Sees Act of God in … Continue reading →

The Auto Industry As a Play: A wonderful summation of what is wrong with Detroit. Staff Keeps Neuberger After Deal Falls Apart: Essentially buying the liability-free shop, which was meant to be worth $8 billion, for nothing. Central banks need … Continue reading →

Securities lending starting to dry up a little? Worries about counterparty risk are infecting the repo markets. Brown unveils mortgage help plan: The UK plan to prevent foreclosures: deferred mortgage interest, no reduction in principal. When Reactionary Goldbug Austrian Plumber-Economists … Continue reading →

Secrets and lies: Why analyst forecasts are useless. Motion sickness quantified: The S&P 500 moved more than 5% 27 times between 1950 and 2000. And 22 times between October 1 and now. Expenditure vs investment — thinking clearly: Why bailout … Continue reading →

Remembering Tanta: And over a thousand more comments. This woman touched a lot of people. The Occasional Seemingly Free Lunch: Lots of government debt trading wide to Treasuries. Oh, jeepers: Quite a time series. Amoral MBA Students And I honestly … Continue reading →

Burning Down His House: Steve Fishman on Dick Fuld. "At night, Fuld has trouble sleeping. Most of the time, he lives in Greenwich, Connecticut, in one of his five houses." U.K. Takes Majority Stake in Royal Bank of Scotland: Historic. … Continue reading →

Record U.S. CDS: 56 bp Things to be thankful for tomorrow: That we can pay real money for financial instruments insuring against the end of the world, which have almost zero chance of paying out if the end of the … Continue reading →

A tsunami of hope or terror? How synthetic CDOs might end up saving the banking system. FHA-Backed Loans: The New Subprime: Those subprime lenders never went away, and the FHA is outmatched. The Brad DeLong question – and how to … Continue reading →

The 7 Who Could Have Saved Citi: "Sandy Weill’s dream of creating an impenetrable financial colossus really has been realized." At JP Morgan, under Jamie Dimon. Headline du Jour: Move Along — No Rescue Talks Here: Apparently the White House … Continue reading →

Should "bad" financial contracts be banned? "No rational regulator concerned with substantive transparency would approve of common stock, if it were a novel investment vehicle. It guarantees no cashflows whatever; its "control rights" are so weak for most purchasers that … Continue reading →

The Auto Industry Bailout: Thoughts About Why GM Executives Are Clueless And Their Destructive “No We Can’t” Mindset What Securitization Problem? The F.D.I.C. Weighs In: Apparently most securitized mortgages can be unilaterally modified by servicers — if they’re seriously delinquent … Continue reading →

U.S. Financial System Still Needs at Least $1.0 Trillion to $1.2 Trillion: Says FBR Capital Markets. The Mark Cuban charges – and the economic purpose of insider trading laws Access Uber Alles: Why is the NYT acting as Sallie Krawcheck’s … Continue reading →

Let Detroit Go Bankrupt: Mitt Romney joins those wanting the government to provide post-bankruptcy financing and warranty guarantees, rather than bailing out GM bondholders. A Housing Fix with the Right Incentives: Jed Graham on how the government can become a … Continue reading →

The 11 Blunders of Hank Paulson The Decline and Fall of the S.E.C. More troubles emerge among derivatives: Negative 30-year swap spreads. A Risk Worth Taking: Dan Gross with nice things to say about Community Development Financial Institutions, such as … Continue reading →

Unfair Disclosure: Companies Still Not Posting To The Web Goldman, Morgan Stanley sink; analysts cut outlook: Although the price targets are still multiples of where the stocks are now trading. As they say, how’s that working out? Insider Trading, or … Continue reading →

Top Goldman Sachs Executives Will Not Receive Bonuses for 2008: A 99% pay cut for Lloyd Blankfein, but none of his $68.5 million 2007 bonus is being clawed back. A New Bailout Low: Buy a $10 million bank, get a … Continue reading →

Family Foresight Hall of Shame: Sheldon Adelson: "He put an empire of over $30 billion at the mercy of a single 12-month earnings covenant in a single credit agreement, with almost no margin of safety. His foundation, and those who … Continue reading →

World Bank to Lend $100 Billion to Poor Nations Over 3 Years: Including $35 billion to middle-income countries by the middle of next year. Finally, the World Bank can start making money from lending again! Tosca Monthly Shareholder Report, October … Continue reading →