Economy

I have done my part over the past few weeks to write that I thought jobless claims signaled the potential for recovery. I started the drumbeat in late March. Here are the posts:

The first bank nationalization in German history is about to take place. At issue is Hypo Real Estate (HRE), a troubled Munich-based company that lends to commercial property developers and to build offices, hotels, roads, airports, you…

This is from BofA's website: Bank of America Corporation today announced the results of management and shareholder proposals at the company's 2009 annual meeting... All 18 directors were elected to the board by comfortable margins. In…

The U.S. GDP report for the first quarter of 2009 was pretty awful.  GDP came in much worse than expected at an annualized  -6.1% below Q4.  Here are a few data points (all referencing real GDP data): The numbers were much worse than…

Real U.S. GDP declined at an annualized 6.1% in the first quarter (Jan-Mar) of 2009. This almost exactly matches the 6.3% decline in Q4 and is a MUCH larger decline than expected. While I have not crunched all the numbers yet, I am…

This comes via Bloomberg: At least six of the 19 largest U.S. banks require additional capital, according to preliminary results of government stress tests, people briefed on the matter said. While some of the lenders may need extra…

CNBC's Trish Regan talks about banks and the economy with FDIC Chair Sheila Bair.

A friend passed me a URL now which led me to a few posts over at Bronte Capital and at Felix Salmon's blog at Reuters about a firm connected to the Biden family called Ponta Negra. T here may be a connection here to the alleged Stanford…

Over the past few days, I have written two posts regarding the increasingly acrimonious sparring surrounding Bank of America's acquisition of Merrill Lynch. The horrible self-dealing of Ken Lewis and the principal-agent problem BofA…

This is a bombshell from the political world. I believe that means Al Franken will make Obama filibuster-proof. Obviously, this is very bad news for Republicans. I suspect that the deal is that Rendell and Casey will pull out ALL the…