Economy

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…

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…

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…

For the latest week’s data for jobless claims, all you need to know is that the 4-week average barely budged and remains just above the 530,000 mark, consistent with a loss of 200,000 jobs. Clearly employment continues to lag at this point…

You are a teacher at a local primary school. Each school day you and some of your colleagues watch over the children at the school playground to make sure all of the children follow the rules and keep their hands to themselves. Your role is…

Watch the hour-long retrospective which aired tonight on PBS’s Frontline.  It should be very enlighteningregarding the seeds of the bubble and meltdown.  It examines who the players in the 1990s and 2000s were, what their attitude to…

Wolfgang Munchau of the Financial Times wrote a very important comment piece in today’s Financial Times. In it he said that central banks are targeting asset prices to avoid the brunt of cyclical downturns. This policy is inducing asset…

From the FDIC: San Joaquin Bank, Bakersfield, California, was closed today by the California Department of Financial Institutions, which appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as receiver. To protect the depositors,…