Economy

Of all the coverage of last night’s State of the Union address, the video below stands out. Now, I’m sure Matthews will have a defence for this piece of analysis i.e. “he was so good that all the talk about Obama and race slipped my mind…

This is a great graphic showing the money and asset flows in the AIG bailout that makes it far easier to understand why people are calling the AIG bailout a backdoor bailout of AIG’s counterparties.  Take a look. Source CHART OF…

This is the second week running that we have seen higher jobless claims.  Two weeks ago the 4-week average seasonally adjusted number was 440,750. This was a number reflective of steadily declining claims in the period leading up to…

I just received this document from an interested reader. It is a request by Congressman Darrell Issa for a subpoena to be issued in order to facilitate the investigation surrounding the AIG cover-up. Apparently, evidence has now surfaced…

In November 2008, the SEC approved a request by American International Group (AIG) to keep secret until November 2018 documents which reveal securities behind the brewing scandal over its bailout by the Federal Reserve. A copy of the…

This problem is going to be solved via tax increases a la Oregon or spending cuts a la California before FY 2011 hits in July. (hat tip Gregor) (click image to enlarge) Source Unemployment Insurance Tracker - ProPublica

A reader who invests in emerging markets sent me an interesting article from the South China Morning Post. Excerpts are below. China's economic stimulus programme has accelerated the already aggressive pace of urban development in the…

When I wrote about house prices six months ago, I said: house prices are bottoming because we have seen a trend in year-on-year changes from January through May that looks likely to continue into the present day.  If this trend (of…

As I indicated in my post Grading Obama’s economic policy after one year, I see the President as a triangulating center-left politician of the Bill Clinton variety. The reason we have seen public policy which has been favorable to big…

This comes from Ryan Chittum of the Columbia Journalism Review: Whatever Tim Geithner’s New York Fed was trying to hide in the AIG backdoor bailout was so volatile it was deemed worthy of national-security-like classification, and the…