Marshall Auerback 138 posts 10 comments

You may have seen Ed's post "Gillian Tett: Washington is talking to Swedes about banking crisis solutions" a week back about how the U.S. government was getting ready to talk to Swedish officials regarding the banking crisis. This is a…

As understandable as the Congressional response to the AIG bonuses was, the reality is that this does create a number of disturbing precedents. We have a stupid Congress mindlessly lashing out to compensate for its own complicity in…

Marshall Auerback here. I have a few thoughts about AIG and what it means politically and for American banks. The episode may have already made it much harder to get any support in Congress for bailing out more banks in the future. The…

Marshall Auerback here. Here is my take on Chinese Premier Wen's recent statements. At the end of the day, too many people seem to be working on an old gold standard type of model in the sense that there are implied limits in terms of…

Everyone is talking about marking to market as if its elimination is a silver bullet. So far as the economics goes, I am not sure that mark to market is such a big deal. The whole point of the banks is to make loans and hold them. Look at…

Let's talk a little about the data released on Friday. On the plus (contrarian) side, everybody is talking about the unemployment number and NOBODY happened to mention that consumer credit was UP on Friday, even before TALF. I think we…

Marshall Auerback here. I have a few words about the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility - otherwise known as the TALF. Economist Paul Kasriel of Northern Trust confirms my interpretation, namely that we get stuffed holding these…

Marshall Auerback here. Unlike Ed, I like to call a spade a spade regarding the Obama Administration's economic gurus. The more they screw up, the greater the number and depth of the crises, the greater the responsibility/ power Obama…

Marshall Auerback here. As Ed lucidly suggested to me by e-mail: "We see the Fed giving a loan for assets at the price as reported on the institutions' books. Otherwise, you have to take a write-down just to get the loan. That's a…

Marshall Auerback here. Now that Barack Obama has been inaugurated, we should actually look back to 1933 to get a sense of perspective. How did Americans see the economy at the Inauguration of Franklin Roosevelt? The short answer is…