October 2009

The following post is a re-post from Rick Bookstaber’s blog. Bookstaber is a market veteran who has long and storied history of achievement. He worked at Bridgewater Associates, ran the Quantitative Equity Fund at FrontPoint Partners and…

The Problem is Not TBTF, but TDTR - Yves Smith TDTR means Too Difficult to Resolve Economist's View: "The Death-Defying Dollar" Long-term weakness but no collapse. Paul Krugman - The Chinese Disconnect - NYTimes.com…

The positive earnings announcement by Wells Fargo on Wednesday was marred by a sell recommendation from Dick Bove and a lot of chatter about credit writedowns and mortgage servicing rights (MSRs). I wanted to add a few words about the…

After I published the recent story on the case against servicing agent MERS in the Kansas Supreme court, I noticed a lot of chatter about some mortgage servicing line items in Wells Fargo’s earnings report. So I wanted to quote a few blurbs…

Morgan Stanley has an interesting piece out this morning called Debtflation. In the past, they have raised alarm bells over what they see as embedded inflation in the loose monetary policy presently being followed by most central…

The number is zero.  According to a recent Harvard study, two of every three bankruptcies in the US are medical-related. That’s why at least catastrophic coverage for everyone is the real purpose of healthcare reform. Why some…

We received word today from the British government that GDP in the UK contracted for a record sixth quarter in Q3 2009. I like Neil Hume’s headline on this one, “GDP shock flop.”

John Meriwether, the 62-year old former Salomon bond trader and LTCM wizard is back for, what is this, his fourth go round. For those of you who don’t remember the 1980s, John Meriwether was the biggest of the ‘big swinging dicks’ on…

FT.com - SEB back in black as Baltics stabilise Return to profits. Again, all is seemingly well in banking FT.com - China must keep its eyes fixed on the exit "While we have avoided the worst recession since the Great…

John Gapper had a good piece in the FT yesterday called “Goldman should be allowed to fail.” His conclusion is that Goldman is allowed to game the system. It is a broker-dealer masquerading as a bank. It takes on much more risk than a…