Bloomberg BusinessWeek – Roger Lowenstein: Wall Street: Not Guilty Why have no executives gone to jail for their roles in the financial crisis? Perhaps because risk-taking and stupidity aren’t criminal Taken from the top, these sentiments imply that the financial crisis was caused by fraud; that people who take big risks should be subject to… Continue reading No Crooks On Wall Street
The Boston Globe – Paul McMorrow: Slipping and stalling with housing BRUTAL SETS of housing data have been rolling in over the past couple weeks. Whether from economists or real estate firms or mortgage companies on the government dole, the numbers all point in the same direction — America’s housing market is in a double-dip… Continue reading Housing
International Business Times – Stock market crash 2011: get out around July? Legendary investor Jeremy Grantham of GMO LLC, partly in jest, suggested that investors should consider selling their stocks around July 2011. He said going back to 1960, the first 7 months of the third year of a presidential cycle (like 2011) produced inflation-adjusted… Continue reading Sell In July And Go Away?
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The Wall Street Journal – Stagnation Worries Top Those on Inflation Here is a seeming paradox: Even as prices for many goods have been rising, investors seem to have become less worried about inflation. Indeed, events Thursday could throw this into sharp relief. First, April’s producer-price index, which measures prices paid at the wholesale level,… Continue reading Commodities Bubbles And Inflation Expectations
The Wall Street Journal – Bill Proposes Mortgage Shake-Up Two lawmakers, a California Republican and a Michigan Democrat, are set to unveil legislation Thursday to replace mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with at least five private companies that would issue mortgage-backed securities with explicit federal guarantees. The measure is a compromise between conservative… Continue reading Fannie & Freddie: If At First You Don’t Succeed, Try The Exact Same Thing Again
The Financial Times – Greece and Portugal should both go gracefully Even as the ink is drying on Portugal’s European Union and International Monetary Fund bail-out agreement, evidence is mounting that last year’s bail-outs of Greece and Ireland have failed. Far from improving their access to the financial markets, Greece and Ireland face record borrowing… Continue reading Europe
Bloomberg.com – Jonathan Weil: Greeks Blaming Speculators Sure Sign of Panic There’s a point in almost every financial crisis when pretty much anything anybody says about it can take on a ring of truth, because the leaders responsible for dealing with the disaster have squandered their credibility. That’s where the Greek financial crisis stands now.… Continue reading When All Else Fails, Blames The Speculators
The Wall Street Journal – The $8,000 Credit Cost Some Home Buyers Much More If you missed out on the $8,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers that expired just over a year ago, you might be better off for it. Numbers released Monday suggest typical recipients have lost twice as much to falling house prices… Continue reading Yet Another Government Subsidy That Didn’t Work Out Exactly As Planned
The Wall Street Journal – UBS: Basel Rules Leave Banks Overcapitalized Banks will likely have too much cash by 2019 as a result of the Basel III global banking rules, UBS AG Chief Executive Oswald Grübel said Thursday. “In the next 10 years, at the end of 2019, we will have overly liquid, overcapitalized banks,”… Continue reading Overcapitalized Banks
MarketBeat (WSJ Blog) – MIT Issues Rare 100-Year Bond The folks at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology tend to be brainiacs. And they are taking advantage of super-duper low interest rates by issuing a rare 100-year bond. Dow Jones Newswires’ Katy Burne has the scoop: The Massachusetts Institute of Technology came to market Wednesday with… Continue reading Looking To Add Some Duration To Your Portfolio?
The Wall Street Journal – The Constitution and the Debt-Ceiling Debate Congressional Republicans debating how to use the government’s debt ceiling to control runaway federal spending should examine one of the Constitution’s relatively obscure clauses: Section Four of the 14th Amendment. This provision, which forbids any default on outstanding federal debt, appears to limit the… Continue reading The 14th Amendment & The Debt Ceiling