Commenter Linda S, who has an exasperating habit of asking questions that I don’t really know the answers to, asks regarding credit default swaps: I … have read articles that suggest that these swaps not only give people an incentive to drive a company into bankruptcy but that it provides a huge incentive to make [...]

When I worked at Fortune I used to go down to Washington to talk to Alan Greenspan about once a year. I wasn’t really trying to report on what the Fed was up to, so the conversations could range all over the place. I remember one very clearly in which Greenspan stated his opinions on [...]

Today’s trivia fun fact comes from George Hofheimer of the Filene Research Institute. I was talking to him for this story about how credit unions have been faring amid the economic tumult, when I asked if his outfit was affiliated with the Credit Union National Association, a trade group. They’re both on Mineral Point Road [...]

A reader writes: I’ve asked brokers, finance wizards and total strangers to explain what the stock market does. Yes, I understand that when a business issues new shares, it gets capitalized. And when a business folds, shareholders get the (ha ha) liquidation dividend. I also acknowledge that there needs to be some sort of vehicle [...]

The calm and and less-painful-than-expected conclusion of the big auction of Lehman Brothers’ credit default swaps has led to some talk that maybe the role of CDSes (CDSs? CDS?) in bringing on our current financial near-debacle has been wildly overblown. Making the case perhaps even more strongly is Ben Stein’s Yahoo column from last Friday, [...]

I’ve been meaning for a while to put a plug in here for Arnold Kling, who has delivered some of the most consistently provocative commentary on the financial freakout over the past couple of months. Much of Kling’s appeal has to with his possibly unique-on-this-planet combination of knowledge, experience and attitude. He’s a product of [...]

The New York Fed has a neat new interactive map where you can check credit card and mortgage delinquency rates by county. Here’s a screen grab: I’d like to give a shout out to the people of Calhoun Co., Illinois—all 5,000 of you—because according to the New York Fed, you are completely on time with [...]

For several years now, a few smart people–Morgan Stanley’s Stephen Roach is the first to spring to mind, but there were others–have been arguing that the Federal Reserve ought to do more to rein in the creation of asset price bubbles. Alan Greenspan, after making a tentative attempt at bubble management with his famous “irrational [...]

Yesterday I wrote a story for Time.com about how loan modifications aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. You can read it here. Since we like our web stories short, I didn’t have as much space as I might have liked to quote the evidence behind my conclusion—that loan modifications, at least the way they’re [...]