Credit Writedowns

Animal Spirits Depend on Trust - Robert Shiller, Wall Street Journal Geithner enlists lobbyist as top aide - Jeanne Cummings - Politico.com (Hat tip Marshall) Argentina’s B- Rating Affirmed by Standard & Poor’s Ratings - Bloomberg.com…

In case you missed it, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae have cost taxpayers tens of billions to date. The bill is still rising, however, as the two companies are looking for $50 billion more to avoid technical insolvency. Then there is…

I have yet to read what the media has reported on the new Case-Shiller Housing Index numbers for November 2008. However, I have crunched the numbers and they do not look very good. For the Composite-20 list of cities, the index is down…

Government policy must be well-crafted in order to avoid negative unintended consequences that arise when the government inserts itself into the private sector. And this is where I am having a problem with the Obama Administration.…

There seems to be a blame game making the rounds in policy circles these days in which Asia is at fault for the credit crisis and economic downturn. The meme goes like this: Everything was fine until the Asians started manipulating their…

I am out of commission for most of the day, but here are a few articles that I ran across last night and early this morning. I should be posting more later tonight. Cheers. Ed Bad news: we're back to 1931. Good news: it's not 1933 yet -…

'Drug money flowed into banks' - Fin24 South Africa (This is a must-read article) California’s First Centennial Bank Shut by Regulator - Bloomberg.com (Another FDIC Friday night special) Older workers escaping the ax - MSN Money (Very…

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…

You may have already seen the Warren Buffett interview on Dateline from last Sunday. In it, he gives a sober analysis of what to expect from the new Obama Administration in terms of economic policy. The long and short of it is that we…

Update 08 Mar 2009: Remember this: Wells Fargo gave anxious investors a pleasant surprise Wednesday, reporting a profit drop that was milder than anticipated and lifting its quarterly dividend by 10 percent. Wells Fargo’s…