Archive for January 2nd, 2009

How One Economist’s Warning About The Dangers Was Ignored

Here is a striking example of how group think among the world’s supposedly savviest economists led them to completely ignore a warning about what we have come now to know as a disaster. In 2005 Raghuram Rajan, a professor at the University of Chicago’s business school and something of a free market proponent, presented a paper that nailed […]

FDIC Unloads IndyMac

The FDIC sold IndyMac for $13.9 billion to a group of private investors. The FDIC has agreed to share in future loan losses so long as the new owners continue the loan modification program that the FDIC instituted at the bank. The new owners will also inject $1.3 billion in new capital and bring in […]

ISM Comes In Worse Than Expected

The first business day of 2009 was more than passably strange. Equity markets were buoyant and the news could arguably have not been worse. I tend to ignore the stock market, at least in the short term, so let’s just assume all of the buyers showed up today and the sellers took an extra day […]