Here’s a good read over at The Daily Beast on the Obama banking recovery plan (my emphasis added). An excerpt:
“Timothy Geithner, Larry Summers, and a host of other economists—myself among them—spent the late 1990s yelling at Japanese and other Asian officials to clean up their banking crises. A typical conversation would end with the American [...]
From the monthly archives:
March 2009
I’ve received several questions from readers about the safety of Treasuries. The two questions below paraphrase some of the most relevant ones.
Q. I saw comments from other experts that “Treasuries are not safe.” What do you think?
A. I’ve seen similar comments. But in most cases, when you review them more carefully, [...]
Normally, I don’t spend much time talking about the regional purchasing managers indices. But the Chicago NAPM index that just hit the tape is noteworthy for its weakness. In fact, it stands out against certain other reports, which appeared to be showing a bit of stabilization and/or pickup in the economy.
The index dropped to 31.4 [...]
We just got the latest figures (PDF link) from S&P/Case-Shiller on home prices. The 20-city index dropped at a 19% year-over-year rate in January, up from the 18.6% rate of decline reported in December. On a monthly basis, the index fell 2.8%. That was up from the 2.6% drop reported in December and the fastest [...]
Another driver of today’s carnage is the debt problems at two Generals — General Motors and General Growth Properties. These are two major players in the auto and commercial real estate sectors, respectively, and they’re both in serious debt trouble. We’ll have to see how generous the government and the creditors are in the restructurings [...]
Once-lofty expectations for the upcoming Group of 20 meeting are heading south in a hurry. U.S. and European policymakers are having trouble agreeing on the proper combination of bank bailouts, economic stimulus, and so on. It’ll be interesting to see how the markets react (in early trading, “risk aversion” trades — stocks down, bonds up, [...]
This past week, my Money & Markets column was devoted to identity theft, and ways to protect yourself from it. I noted that thieves could do a lot of different things with your information, including renting apartments.
And now, this story from CNN really brings home my point. As it notes:
“The Federal Trade Commission reported that [...]
You have to love the way this public-private asset purchase plan is constructed. Ingenious how the administration has figured out a way to massively subsidize the banking industry and claim that’s not what it’s doing. This FT article makes clear what is really going on (I have read similar critiques at several other blogs). Here [...]
IBM announced that it is going to lay off 5,000 U.S. workers and shift many of those jobs to India.
Did you know that 71% of IBM’s 400,000 employees work outside of North America? That ups from 65% in 2007.
Getting computer nerd training was a sure-fire way to a successful technology career a few years ago. [...]
Taiwan-based ChipMOS, a company I visited it during my last trip to Taiwan, is a chip testing company. The last thing you want your new computer to do is not work when you take it out of the box. ChipMOS (IMOS: 0.73 +0.02 +2.82%) makes sure that doesn’t happen.
Business stinks though. Q4 sales dropped by [...]
