Here is the smartest thing I’ve read yet about how to stabilize the housing market through loan modifications. If you want the short version, check out the testimony Columbia Business School’s Christopher Mayer gave in front of the House financial services committee on Tuesday.
The argument, made with colleagues Edward Morrison (from …
The Great Debate over whether we should cut taxes or increase government spending to stimulate the economy has sent many of us noneconomists digging into the evidence economists have gathered on the topic. Most of it is, as Nate Silver put it after reading Christina and David Romer’s big paper (pdf) on the macroeconomic effects of …
John Reed, who as CEO of Citicorp merged it with Sandy Weill’s Travelers Group just over a decade ago, admitted it last spring, telling the Financial Times that “the specific merger transaction clearly has to be seen to have been a mistake.” Now current Citi CEO Vikram Pandit—who has been talking to Reed on a pretty regular basis—has …
I’m just back from a stroll over to the HarperCollins building, where I handed over almost 400 pages of marked-up Myth of the Rational Market manuscript (we’ve reached the stage in the process where I’m no longer allowed to alter anything electronically). This is all happening about four years after it was originally supposed to, but the …
I’ve been bothered for a while by all the criticism of the banks for “hoarding” the $300+ billion we taxpayers have given them rather than lending it right back out again. But I haven’t been able to articulate the counterargument. Happily Jack “The Mortgage Professor” Guttentag has at least partially done it for me. An excerpt:
The
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All day long the top story on Time.com has been this one about a spike in shark attacks in Australia. It starts:
Swimmers at Australian beaches are usually reassured by statistics that indicate they are more likely to be struck by lightning than chomped by a shark. But after three non-fatal shark attacks in the country in less than 48
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I’m off today frantically trying to meet a book-related deadline. But I could not let the glorious news that Rickey Henderson made it into the Hall of Fame on the first ballot go uncommemorated. I used to carry the man’s baseball card in my wallet when I was in high school. As a sort of good luck talisman, I guess. Or maybe to make me …
Here’s a link to a story I wrote about how our puny human brains aren’t particularly up to the task of comprehending big numbers—e.g., $700 billion bailout, $1.2 trillion deficit—and what we can do about it. The piece is designed to be accessible to a broad audience, so I stuck with back-of-the-envelope math that you don’t have to …
Mortgage servicers (who in many cases are also the original lenders) have long been saying they can’t simply cut interest rates or reduce principal balances on loans to help people avoid foreclosure, because they’ll get sued by investors in mortgage-related securities. I find it interesting that this argument has been largely absent from …
This had been in the cards for a few months, but now it’s official: Bob Rubin is leaving Citigroup. He joined up in 1999 after a spectacularly successful stint as Treasury Secretary. His presence was supposed to smooth the troubled relationship between the two heads of the just-merged company, John Reed (Citi) and Sandy Weill …
I’m usually reticent to publicize my television appearances, but since it was actually pretty entertaining (to participate in, at least) and I doubt many of you will just happen to be watching CSPAN2 tonight at 7 p.m. Eastern, here goes: Close up at the Newseum, with host Frank Bond, Michelle Singletary of the Washington Post, me, and …
My latest column is online and in the issue of TIME with half a Star of David and some barbed wire on the cover. It begins.
We are in the midst of a cleanup of toxic financial waste that will cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars, at the very least. The primary manufacturers of these hazardous products pocketed
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