Articles from Contributor
Davos-bound
I’ll be blogging this week from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The theme of this year’s gathering of political and financial movers and shakers is “Improve the State of the World: Rethink, Redesign, Rebuild.” Sounds like a plan to me.
Last year’s meeting, which followed on the heels of the Fall 2008 meltdown, was …
A time for transition, Part 2
The Curious Capitalist is getting curiouser. As Justin takes his leave, we’re adding three new voices to the Curious Capitalist. They belong to these people:
Let me introduce, from left to right, John Curran, Bill Saporito and Steve Gandel.
A time for transition, Part 1
The day is quickly drawing near for Justin to move on to bigger and better things things. As you can see, I am putting on a brave face, but I’m really quite upset. (Justin, as you can see, has taken to drinking.)
Justin will post more about his transition later today, and I’ll post again about some new folks who will be joining the …
Housing reform for the long term
The Federal Housing Administration, which has been propping up the residential real estate market in a major way, announced this morning that it would tighten its lending standards. The FHA has been doing a lot to clean up its books—which do need cleaning up. Raising down payment standards, though, isn’t expected to have much of an …
Don’t kill the Consumer Financial Protection Agency
The WSJ is reporting that Christopher Dodd is flirting with giving up on the idea of a stand-alone Consumer Financial Protection Agency. The House’s financial-reform bill included such an agency, albeit in a form watered-down from what the Obama Administration initially envisioned. According to the WSJ, Dodd will only agree to take the …
Risk-based pricing sticks it to the American consumer
Thanks to federal regulations first ordered up in 2003 (but just recently finalized), consumers who go to borrow money will soon know if they are being charged a higher interest rate because of something unsavory on their credit report. As Kenneth Harney has pointed out, it would have been nice to have had this rule prior to the housing …
It’s the savings, stupid
Remember when the economic crisis taught us the importance of saving some of our money for a rainy day? That’s a lesson the microfinance community is increasingly warming up to, too. I wrote a piece about the shift—emphasizing savings, not just lending—last summer, but I’m mentioning it again today because the Gates Foundation has …
Good news for house prices
Here’s one positive bit of news from the housing front: fewer houses are seeing their prices slashed by owners desperate to sell.
In Trulia.com’s latest analysis of homes listed for sale, only 21% came up as having been previously listed at a higher price. A month ago, 22% of houses were listed at a reduced price, and over the summer 25% were.
Low interest rates weren’t to blame for the housing bubble
That was one of the themes of Ben Bernanke’s speech to the American Economic Association yesterday. And this is the nifty chart he used to make his case:
A tale of many inflations
New numbers out today from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show consumer prices unchanged from last month. At least that’s the case for the core measure of inflation, which strips out food and energy prices since they’re so volatile. If you add those in, which you might want to do if you are thinking about this from the viewpoint of an …
The Fannie and Freddie show continues… and continues
Bloomberg is reporting that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s regulator is renegotiating the terms of the housing agencies’ financial rescue with the Treasury Department. According to unnamed people “familiar with the talks,” this renegotiation could include increasing the size of the agencies’ $400 billion lifeline—so far, Fannie Mae has …