Why didn’t the Fannie-Freddie semi-rescue-plan announced over the weekend reassure the stock market? It wasn’t really meant to reassure the stock market. It was meant to keep the investors around the world who buy the bonds and mortgage-backed securities issued by the two companies from freaking out, and seems to have succeeded on that front [...]

Here’s a fun fact for the day, derived by Harm Bandholz of Unicredit from the Fed’s latest Flow of Funds data: Since the beginning of the financial crisis in mid-2007, … 130% of all newly issued home mortgages were financed by GSEs. GSEs mean government-sponsored enterprises, which mean Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the explicitly [...]

The Federal Reserve announced Sunday that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac can borrow money from it if they need to. Then the Treasury Department said it’s going to ask Congress for permission both to increase its credit line to the two giant mortgage lenders and to buy stock in them if necessary to shore up [...]

I’m at work late. Why? I don’t know. I should go. Anyway, I’m here, so I saw that Starbucks just announced its first round of store closings. Go here to see if your favorite store is set to be axed. They’ve only posted the first 50 (out of about 600), so no one is out [...]

I’ve just churned out a quickie Fannie-Freddie analysis for Time.com. Here’s how it starts: All debt issued by mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac comes with a prominent disclaimer: “Not guaranteed by the United States.” But the business model of both companies, not to mention the continued functioning of the U.S. mortgage market, depends [...]

Last night I stopped off at the launch party of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation at the Council on Foreign Relations (where Peterson was chairman of the board for 22 years). I was underdressed (no tie), plus Thursday night is date night with Mrs. Curious Capitalist so I didn’t want to stick around long, so [...]

Justin may have a column in this week’s magazine, but I have a 200-word book review. Here, I’ll give you the whole thing: When no one owns a resource, we tend to overuse it–winding up with polluted skies, fished-out oceans and battles over access to freshwater. But too much ownership leads to problems too. A [...]

My new column is in the issue of TIME with Nelson Mandela on the cover and online here. It begins: Barney Frank is on the line. I ask the Massachusetts Democrat, who chairs the House Financial Services Committee, if he thinks the housing bill that he and Senator Chris Dodd are on the verge of [...]

Politically speaking, Phil Gramm’s “mental recession” remark was about the dumbest thing imaginable–which is why the McCain camp is running away from it as fast as it can (I liked McCain’s “Ambassador to Belarus” remark). But taken on purely economic terms his comments to the Washington Times weren’t all crazy. A quick run-through, after the [...]