Archive for August, 2008
Sunday, August 31st, 2008
Oh I've heard all of the conventional wisdom:
She's a woman and can pick off disaffected Hillary supporters.
At 44, she offsets McCain's age problem
She has a very strong conservative record. She's pro-life and pro-guns. (Exhibit A to the right: an AP photo of her posing with a caribou she shot.)
But ...
Posted in politics | 5 Comments »
Friday, August 29th, 2008
Integrity Bank in Georgia was shut down by the FDIC today. Bloomberg has the story.
Integrity Bank, with $1.1 billion in assets and $974 million in deposits, was shuttered by the Georgia Department of Banking and Finance and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Regions Financial Corp., Alabama's biggest bank, will assume ...
Posted in bailout, banking, credit crunch | 5 Comments »
Tuesday, August 26th, 2008
It's no longer any secret that the USA is deeply in hock to foreign governments, particularly China, Japan, the Petro States, and increasingly Russia. We have two very large deficits that have to be financed: a trade deficit and a fiscal deficit. Americans buy more than they sell. ...
Posted in Dollar, Economy, international trade | 18 Comments »
Friday, August 22nd, 2008
Who knew someone was working on a documentary following David Walker's Fiscal Wake-Up Tour? I interviewed Walker for an article about the Tour earlier this year, during the period when much of this movie was shot.
Anyway, tonight there was a special screening at 8PM in select theaters across ...
Posted in Economy, government spending, politics, taxpayer issues | 30 Comments »
Wednesday, August 20th, 2008
How often does the NY Post beat the Journal and the Times to a good financial story? Today they did, noting that Lehman tried to secure $5 billion of rescue capital from South Korea, but failed to do so:
Lehman Brothers' embattled Chief Executive Dick Fuld nearly struck a deal ...
Posted in Economy, GSE, international trade | 2 Comments »
Sunday, August 17th, 2008
In researching my last post, I found this video. It's long, but worth it. One of the best summaries of the state of the American economy that I've seen or read.
Skip the introduction...
Posted in bailout, banking, bubble, credit crunch, Dollar, Economy, Fed, housing, inflation, Interest Rates, taxpayer issues | 3 Comments »
Friday, August 15th, 2008
I had a chance to catch up on some reading while in South America. Two books that may be of interest to readers of this blog include Roger Lowenstein's new book While America Aged on the various pension crises facing America and Martin Mayer's older book The Greatest-Ever Bank ...
Posted in banking, bubble, credit crunch, Economy, government spending, taxpayer issues | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, August 12th, 2008
This is old news at this point, but since I've been on vacation (a few pics here), I thought I'd note it just the same.
A few days after we published our expose of Jonathan Kempner's poor performance as CEO of the Mortgage Bankers Association, he announced his resignation. He ...
Posted in housing, politics | 2 Comments »
Monday, August 11th, 2008
Hello again all. I'm back after 3 weeks in South America on the Amazon River and sailing the Galapagos Islands. The Amazon was fantastic, though the wildlife in Galapagos made for better photographic opportunities:
GIANT TORTOISES
BLUE-FOOTED BOOBIES
MARINE IGUANAS
AND LOTS OF BABY SEA LIONS
Along the way, we stumbled upon a ...
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
