Bailout

Housing: The see-no-evil muddle-through approach

Posted on January 10, 2011
David Streitfeld reckons that if mortgage delinquencies continue to pile up without turning into foreclosure actions, that could be good for the economy as a whole:

How much is a law degree worth?

Posted on January 10, 2011
David Segal is the best writer on the NYT's business desk, so it's a good thing that he was chosen to pen today's 5,000-word disquisition on the economics of law degrees.

Algorithms vs retail investors

Posted on January 10, 2011
Anand Iyer, after reading the article I wrote in Wired with Jon Stokes, emails with a couple of questions:

What will replace unions?

Posted on January 10, 2011
Jim Surowiecki has an excellent column this week on the declining influence, and increasing unpopularity, of labor unions:

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Fed profitability datapoint of the day

Posted on January 10, 2011
At the end of 2010, the Federal Reserve system had $2.423 trillion in assets and $2.367 trillion in liabilities, which means that the simplest measure of its total equity -- assets minus liabilities -- comes to $56.6 billion.

Davos: Where epic shifts are converging

Posted on January 10, 2011
Chrystia and I differ on whether Davos is actually important. I say it isn't, and Exhibit A is this invitation, which I received today.

FT Tilt: A blog behind a paywall

Posted on January 10, 2011
FT Tilt has now officially launched.

Counterparties

Posted on January 07, 2011
Convicted of insider trading in NY? You're likely to get off lightly -- Reuters

The Ibanez case and housing-market catastrophe risk

Posted on January 07, 2011
The 16-page decision in the case of US Bank vs Ibanez does not make for easy reading. But it's a very important case: it's a solid precedent saying that if a bank doesn't own a mortgage, then it can't foreclose on a home.

The silly, underperforming Dow

Posted on January 07, 2011
Eddy Elfenbein notes that the Dow has significantly underperformed the market of late. Here's how it compares to the S&P 500 over the past 180 days: up 16.6%, which is great, but not nearly as great as the S&P's 19.9% gain.

Political appointees and the revolving door

Posted on January 07, 2011
Justin Fox has a smart piece on the revolving door today.

No good news for the long-term unemployed

Posted on January 07, 2011
The December jobs report turns recent history on its head.

Counterparties

Posted on January 06, 2011
Volcker to step down from White House panel -- Reuters

Facebook doesn?t care where Goldman gets its funds

Posted on January 06, 2011
The NYT is reporting that Goldman Sachs only made its $450 million investment in Facebook after its in-house private equity fund, Goldman Sachs Capital Partners, passed on the deal.

Assange?s mental health

Posted on January 06, 2011
Does anybody actually like the person that Julian Assange has become of late? He seems to infuriate everybody he comes into contact with: his former spokesman, for instance, is writing a book about him which accuses him of ?high-handedness, dishonesty and grave mistakes?.

Vanity Fair?s odd HuffPo story

Posted on January 06, 2011
What to make of Bill Cohan's big Vanity Fair piece on a slightly skeevy lawsuit where a pair of Democratic party operatives are trying to pull a Winklevoss on Arianna Huffington?

Why Facebook?s investors want it privately-traded

Posted on January 06, 2011
John Abell asks a very good question about a privately-traded Facebook:

Gene Sperling and the institutionalization of the revolving door

Posted on January 06, 2011
It now seems all but certain that Gene Sperling is going to get Larry Summers's (and his own) old job at the NEC. And David Corn has a long piece in Mother Jones defending the choice. (He's not the only person to have this idea: Jacob Weisberg has a similar column...

Counterparties

Posted on January 05, 2011
World Bank Issues Yuan Bond -- WSJ

Does Goldman?s Facebook investment violate the Volcker Rule?

Posted on January 05, 2011
Bill Cohan raises an interesting point:

Counterparties

Posted on January 04, 2011
What a rising stock market does: the govt might conceivably end up making a profit on its GMAC bailout -- NYT

Sovereign default watch, Ivory Coast edition

Posted on January 04, 2011
My headline, in April 2010, less than eight months ago, said "Ivory Coast?s bond exchange gets it exactly right". Clearly, I spoke too soon:

How Google is like bananas

Posted on January 04, 2011
By weird coincidence, Whole Foods was sold out of bananas today, as the latest issue of the New Yorker arrived on newsstands with a great (but sadly paywalled) article about the way in which the world of bananas-for-export is threatened by something known as Tropical Race Four.

Why Facebook won?t go public

Posted on January 04, 2011
Miguel Helft explains why Facebook is going to have to go public sooner or later:

Roger Altman, Rubinite

Posted on January 04, 2011
In April 2006, Robert Rubin and Roger Altman launched the Hamilton Project under the aegis of the Brookings Institution.

How to deal with the plutocrats

Posted on January 04, 2011
Chrystia Freeland has a long essay on the new global elite in the Atlantic, which will eventually become her next book. It's well timed to coincide with the self-congratulatory plutocratic gabfest that is Davos, which kicks off in three weeks' time, and with which Chrystia is very familiar.

Goldman?s Facebook coup

Posted on January 03, 2011
The NYT reports that Goldman Sachs is investing $450 million of its own money into Facebook.

Counterparties

Posted on January 03, 2011
"She died in 1995, yet her signature later appeared on thousands of affidavits submitted by Portfolio Recovery" -- WSJ

Banking: Why geography matters

Posted on January 03, 2011
Jeff Grabmeier reports on some interesting research from Ohio State's Stephanie Moulton, which shows that borrowers with low incomes or bad credit are significantly less likely to default on their loans if they borrow from a local bank than if they borrow from a distant bank or mortgage company.

Felix Salmon smackdown watch, Rubin/Sperling edition

Posted on January 03, 2011
Brad DeLong has an excellent response to my post this morning about Larry Summers's replacement at the NEC.

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