What is America’s No. 1 export? Debt. And that’s what my column in the new issue of TIME, with the clipout ballot on the cover, is about. It begins: Japan and Germany make cars. Saudi Arabia pumps oil. China supplies the world with socks and toys and flat-screen TVs. What does the United States produce? [...]
Australian money manager John Hempton owned Washington Mutual preferred shares and was thus wiped out when the bank was seized and flipped to JP Morgan Chase last week. But he’s not mad about that. He’s mad about what happened to owners of Wamu bonds. By also wiping out senior debt holders at Wamu, he argues, [...]
