Jason Zweig, one of the best financial journos out there, went to town on conspicuous consumption today. Seriously, until you don’t have enough money to take public transportation, do not try to bellyache about your stock-market losses around Jason. His piece, entitled “What a Bear Market Might Teach Us,” is part of a burgeoning discourse [...]
For all those people out there who want to know why they’re not seeing more of this government bailout money directed at ordinary folk, boy do I have an acronym for you. Meet TALF, the Term Asset Backed Securities Loan Facility. This morning the Treasury Department announced that the Federal Reserve Bank of New York [...]
The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index rose a bit this month, after hitting an all-time low in October (the measure goes back to 1967). I don’t know that it means all that much, but it is an indication of something that should start playing out more broadly in economic data releases–and perhaps injecting a touch [...]
I think it’s pretty clear what Barack Obama was up to in choosing Tim Geithner to be his Treasury Secretary and Larry Summers his chief White House economic adviser. He knows we’re in a serious economic crisis, and he wants people who know what they’re doing and can get stuff done, quickly. As for Summers, [...]
