Hank Paulson is going to make a speech Monday about what our financial regulatory system ought to look like. But the WSJ, NYT, WaPo, and LAT already have all the details. (Not a word yet in the FT, interestingly enough.)
This latest of several “Paulson plans” (the full “executive summary” is here) is not directly a response to the …
So, long after Ana got to it on Swampland, I’ve finally read Barack Obama’s big financial regulation speech. His basic diagnosis of the problem is this:
A regulatory structure set up for banks in the 1930s needed to change because the nature of business has changed. But by the time the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed in 1999, the $300
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This time from comedian/actress Julia Sweeney (via PZ Myers):
Ben Stein once did a Groundling show, an improv show, that I was a part of. I found him to be spectacularly ill-informed and narcissistic and weirdly devoted to his schtick and worst of all, hacky. He didn’t listen to his fellow performers and played everything outward to
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Here it is, the fourth in my world-changing series of unhelpful photos of book parties (it was previously lo-res photos of book parties, but this time the fault lies not with the device but the photographer). The party was for Jeff Gordinier’s blockbuster X Saves the World: How Generation X Got the Shaft but Can Still Keep Everything …
Michael Lewis on investment banks:
To both their investors and their bosses, Wall Street firms have become shockingly opaque. But the problem isn’t new. It dates back at least to the early 1980s when one firm, Salomon Brothers, suddenly began to make more money than all the other firms combined. (Go look at the numbers: They’re
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Felix Salmon has written an epic essay on just what makes Ben Stein such a threat to the republic. It’s very good, and very Karl Popper. Felix’s main complaint is that Stein is “anti-enlightenment.” Rather than offering explanations for the market’s behavior (or the evolution of the human race) that are falsifiable–that is, they could …
Upon reading the same speech that led the NYT to declare that John McCain had “draw[n] a sharp distinction between himself and the two Democratic presidential candidates” (which I wrote about Wednesday), James Pethokoukis of U.S. News came to the near opposite conclusion:
Based on that speech, I think it is pretty easy to see how McCain
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The new Case-Shiller house price numbers (through January) came out yesterday. It was widely reported that they were ugly, and they were–the 20-city composite index was down 10.7% since January 2007 and 12.5% since its peak in July 2006.
I was curious how much worse things would look if adjusted for inflation. Here’s what I found out, …
The NYT has an article today contrasting John McCain’s views on the housing crisis with those of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. It begins:
SANTA ANA, Calif. — Drawing a sharp distinction between himself and the two Democratic presidential candidates, Senator John McCain of Arizona warned Tuesday against vigorous government action to
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This was the view from Congress Street this morning. I was a little surprised at the Hummer. Are they allowed here?
Maybe it would have been simpler just to let Bear Stearns go bankrupt.
When the Fed swept in just over a week ago to arrange a shotgun marriage between JP Morgan Chase and Bear Stearns, the idea was to avert a sudden collapse of the investment bank that might have caused credit markets to completely freeze up, while at the same time …
King Banaian points out something that Senate Banking Committee chairman Chris Dodd said back in November about why he was holding up confirmation of Randall Kroszner’s re-nomination to the Federal Reserve Board:
“There’s one nomination here that would be for somebody [for] 14 years,” Dodd told reporters on a conference call.
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