When last I checked, the Official Financial Indicator of the Panic of ’08, the TED spread, had dropped below 3. The TED spread measures the gap in interest rates between three-month T bills and three-month LIBOR, and it hasn’t closed below 3 since Sept. 26. Of course, it was in the 1 to 1.1 range [...]

The call came Saturday evening before dinner. Curious Capitalist Jr. (who is 9) picked up. The caller asked to speak to a grownup. He handed the phone to Mrs. Curious Capitalist. Mrs. CC sat there answering questions for a while. From the answers, they seemed like very strange questions. After a while CC Jr. came [...]

I quoted the warnings of veteran money manager Jeremy Grantham a couple of times in the lead-up to the current financial mess. My favorite came in July 2007 when Grantham described the minor jitters that had hit markets several times already that year: Rather like a brontosaurus that has been bitten on the tail and [...]

For obvious reasons, I’ve been getting a lot more reader e-mail than I used to. Which is great, except that I’m now way behind in answering. So here’s a good one one from a week ago that has only gotten more relevant with the passage of time: One of the economic issues that really disturbs [...]

As already noted here, FT economics columnist Martin Wolf has a new book out called Fixing Global Finance. It’s not really about the current crisis, but it is about the giant imbalances in global capital flows that Wolf thinks were the biggest cause of the current crisis. I went to a breakfast with Wolf on [...]

The new issue of Jack Ciesielski’s Analyst’s Accounting Observer has a list of “20 Questions to Ask on Conference Calls.” He means quarterly earnings conference calls, and the questions are all related to the current financial and economic turmoil. You’ll have to pay Jack some big bucks if you want to know all 20, but [...]

A Danish friend who watched the debate from Copenhagen sent me this e-mail last night. He was a little groggy–it was 5 a.m. his time–but I figured it was worth sharing: [A]mericans don’t understand that you’re a part of a global economy and society. The whole world is struggling with financial problems mainly because of [...]

University of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan had a provocative piece on the New York Times op-ed page last Friday arguing that, financial crisis or no, the economy would be okay. The reason he’s so sure? The strong performance of a measure he calls marginal product of capital: Since World War II, the marginal product of [...]

My column in the new TIME that goes on sale Friday (it’s got Lincoln, FDR, Obama and McCain on the cover) is already up online. It begins: John McCain’s claim that “the fundamentals of our economy are strong,” uttered just before the financial crisis turned dire, may go down as one of the great blunders [...]