February 2009

Report 44 — The Obama Watch (A new blog that I like) Geithner plan disappoints investors - Telegraph Bad debt leads to big loss at UBS - BBC News Bond market calls Fed's bluff as world falls apart - Ambrose Pritchard-Evans, Telegraph…

The hope of bipartisanship dies an early death with Barack Obama's stimulus bill.

A condition of conflict or anxiety resulting from inconsistency between one's duty as regulator and one's actions

Martin Wolf of the Financial Times has issued a damning assessment of the Geithner bailout package. His main criticism is that Geithner's aims are the same narrow set of goals set out by the Bush Administration of working through this…

I will dispense with the commentary and let you judge for yourself.

Caroline Baum has a good column today at Bloomberg.com regarding public anger in America.  She correctly states that the American public is not just angry at Wall Street, but at what Wall Street represents in terms of special interests,…

Update: 18 Mar 2008. I am reposting this entry from Feb 10th because it is relevant to the need to liquidate insolvent institutions like AIG that are now getting bailouts.

I watched the proceedings of the UK Treasury Committee with HBOS and RBS this morning on Bloomberg UK TV and it was a dismal sight. It had the feel of the Nuremburg trials, honestly. The clip below doesn't do justice to how tense the…

This video from the Wall Street Journal demonstrates what happens when governments go bankrupt.

Nouriel Roubini, nicknamed Dr. Doom by the media for his accurate but downbeat calls on the economy, is not presenting a very upbeat scenario here. He says that even if everything goes well, growth in 2010 will be very poor. It will feel…