David Sanger of the New York Times has some interesting thoughts and dares to ask the question that most seem intent on avoiding. Specifically, how close is the U.S. coming to nationalizing industries and how do we square that with our professed support for free markets. When President-elect Barack Obama talked on Sunday about realigning the […]

Here’s an interesting little article from Bloomberg. It seems that a number of companies are just figuring out that their defined benefit plans suck from a funding standpoint right now. The solution, go to Congress and ask for a waiver from a 2006 bill that requires them to make progress towards full funding. The bill […]

I noticed this on FT Alphaville earlier and failed to post it. It’s a post that paints a fairly grim picture of trends in the German economy and discussed the implications for some of the Eastern European countries. A little dry but with some useful data. This goes along with a theme that I’ve written about […]

The slow dance towards a bailout of Detroit took another step towards finality today. Draft legislation was sent over to the White House providing for $15 billion in bridge loans to the industry. So far the terms of the loan call for a seven year term with an interest rate of 5% for the first […]

Federal regulators were shocked, shocked I say, to find that 53% of loans modified in the first quarter of this year are now more than 30 days past due on their new loans. Of course, had you asked anyone who had ever been in the mortgage business what to expect when you modify loans they […]