Bailout

The deficit commission?s plan

Posted on November 10, 2010
The pair of deficit commission reports (draft here, list of illustrative cuts here) is hilariously depressing on both the big-picture and the little-picture level.

Did the midterms kill Keynesianism?

Posted on November 10, 2010
Mark Thoma has a depressing column at the Fiscal Times today, saying that the Obama administration's failed fiscal stimulus threatens the entire idea that the government has a role to play in smoothing economic shocks and protecting the vulnerable from the vagaries of unconstrained capitalism:

The Assurant plunge

Posted on November 10, 2010
Shares in Assurant fell off a cliff this morning, on volume a good order of magnitude greater than is normally seen. What's going on?

Why Google?s cutting back on bonuses

Posted on November 10, 2010
I love the way that Google is giving all its employees a 10% pay rise, and cutting back on payment in the form of bonuses and equity. CEO Eric Schmidt has, in a very Googlish way, got hard numbers on what his employees want, and so he's giving it to them:

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Learning from Ireland

Posted on November 10, 2010
I love the way that the WSJ today covers the collapse of Ireland's banking system, and with it the country's fiscal leadership.

Counterparties

Posted on November 09, 2010
The Oracle/HP feud turns utterly farcical -- Reuters

The force-placed insurance scandal

Posted on November 09, 2010
American Banker's Jeff Horwitz has a spectacular piece of reporting today about goings on in an obscure corner of the mortgage-servicing world known as force-placed insurance.

Brad DeLong?s fiscal manifesto

Posted on November 09, 2010
Brad DeLong is fed up with vague hand-waving from technocrats, Bob Rubin very much included, who call for the government to make difficult decisions without being remotely explicit about what such decisions might entail.

Germany?s beef with QE

Posted on November 09, 2010
Dominic Lawson has a good column on the way the rest of the world sees quantitative easing, and in particular German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble.

What is Dealbook?

Posted on November 09, 2010
The NYT is putting a lot of effort into pushing the newly-relaunched Dealbook, or Dealb%k as it seems to have become.

QE: Greg Ip answers my questions

Posted on November 08, 2010
Are you still confused about quantitative easing, what it is and how it works? I certainly was, and so I asked a genuine expert on the matter -- Greg Ip, the author of The Little Book of Economics: How the Economy Works in the Real World -- whether he could answer a few questions for me.

Disclosing economists? conflicts

Posted on November 08, 2010
Gerald Epstein and Jessica Carrick-Hagenbarth have a 41-page paper out which gets boiled down quite effectively to its title: "Financial Economists, Financial Interests and Dark Corners of the Meltdown: It?s Time to set Ethical Standards for the Economics Profession".

Why you can?t buy a unique house

Posted on November 08, 2010
It's hard to sell a circular house: over the past year, the palindrome-friendly realtors at Weichert have tried and failed to move 300 Farmington Road at $524,425; $499,994; and most recently $449,944. But it's still on the market, and the banks are to blame.

Did a rising savings rate kick-start the recession?

Posted on November 08, 2010
John Carney arrives at all manner of improbable conclusions after staring far too long at this chart:

Is the Fed engaging in currency war?

Posted on November 08, 2010
After the Fed formally announced its new bout of quantitative easing, the CFR's Sebastian Mallaby lost little time in declaring the move a "foreign policy misstep":

How to buy your way out of a felony charge

Posted on November 08, 2010
One of the main contributing factors to the financial crisis was the feeling of impunity and omnipotence which pervaded Wall Street. No matter how egregious their behavior, financiers knew that they would end up wealthy and comfortable. That, in turn, made it much easier to overcome their natural risk aversion.

Why can?t HP?s board get over Hurd?

Posted on November 06, 2010
Are HP's directors physically incapable of letting l'affaire Mark Hurd drop?

America?s failing monetary policy

Posted on November 05, 2010
Shahien Nasiripour has delivered a massive 4,000-word article on the Fed's monetary policy, laying out with great clarity just who's benefitting (big banks and corporations) and who's losing (the public at large, and especially retired savers and the unemployed).

The good-news/bad-news employment report

Posted on November 05, 2010
The mathematics of the monthly payroll report don't always make sense, since it's actually two reports: the household report, covering employment and unemployment status, and the establishment report, showing the number of people being paid in various sectors of the economy.

The car-loan interest rate lottery

Posted on November 05, 2010
Remember Anacott Financial, the scam credit card website which would spit out a completely random number when you asked it for your credit score? It seems that Capital One has taken a leaf out of their book when it comes to offering car-loan rates.

Counterparties

Posted on November 05, 2010
Turmoil in microfinance continues -- Humanosphere

Welcoming Argentina back

Posted on November 05, 2010
I spent a large chunk of this afternoon at a fascinating discussion about Argentina, keyed off a paper from veteran Latam economist Arturo Porzecanski, entitled "Should Argentina be Welcomed Back?"

The Volcker Rule under threat

Posted on November 05, 2010
  Kevin Drawbaugh has obtained a letter from Spencer Bachus, the probable new chair of the Financial Services Committee, to Tim Geithner. And it turns out that Bachus is no fan of the Volcker Rule:

Bernanke explains QE2

Posted on November 04, 2010
Ben Bernanke might not be giving Trichet-style press conferences, but he is at least taking to the op-ed page of the Washington Post to explain yesterday's decision. Here's what he's trying to achieve with his quantitative easing:

Forbes?s labeled and unlabeled ad blogs

Posted on November 04, 2010
When I accused Forbes's Lewis DVorkin of selling out his blogging platform, his lieutenant Andrea Spiegel responded in the comments, saying that the new adblogs would be "clearly labeled and transparent to all".

Navigating Treasury?s dreadful website

Posted on November 04, 2010
Bloomberg's news reporters still haven't worked out how to link to external websites, even the US Treasury: they say that "Geithner?s appointments calendar, updated through August on Treasury?s website", shows an off-the-record meeting with Jon Stewart, but they don't link to it.

BofA chart of the day

Posted on November 04, 2010
Jonathan Weil has a great column on Bank of America, noting that it's trading at a price-to-book ratio of just 0.54.

How QE works

Posted on November 04, 2010
Gawker's John Cook asks me a question about how the Fed's quantitative easing is supposed to work:

The dismal economics of paywalls

Posted on November 04, 2010
Mark Thoma sends me a very clear explanation of the economics of paywalls from Kellogg's Shane Greenstein:

Taibbi and Morgenson

Posted on November 03, 2010
My review of Matt Taibbi's new book is up at Bookforum; I enjoyed it a lot, and even learned from it.

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