Archive for March 6th, 2009

Quote Of The Day

If some great castastrophe is not announced every morning, we feel a certain void. ‘Nothing in the paper,’ we sigh. Paul Valery Amazon Books By Valery

Friday Failure

A light week, only one bank seizure. Is Sheila Bair out of money? Freedom Bank of Georgia, Commerce, Georgia Freedom Bank and Commerce — great marketing words.

The WSJ Has The AIG Info Congress Wants

The Wall Street Journal has a story up disclosing the names of some of the financial institutions to which AIG has paid money. The story names the usual suspects — Goldman, Merrill, Deutsche Bank, RBS, etc. They throw around an aggregate number of $50 billion. Other than that it’s kind of a vague piece. Unless […]

New Poll Says New Jobs More Important Than Fixing Housing

Here are the results of an interesting poll that appeared on MarketWatch this evening. Fifty-three percent of the 2,076 people surveyed by Trulia.com said that creating jobs and establishing job security is the most important thing the president can do to solve the housing crisis. Twenty-one percent said that forcing banks to renegotiate with homeowners was […]

Another Fed President Criticizes And Volcker Calls For Change

Two Fed grey beards spoke out today, somewhat on different subjects but also with a common thread. Thomas Hoenig, the President of the Kansas City Fed and the second longest serving Fed district bank president, called the Treasury’s bank rescue efforts to date ad-hoc and suggested it was time for decisive action. From Bloomberg: “If […]

Mortgage Entitlement

Yesterday the Wall Street Journal had a little fluff piece about the new mortgage bailout initiative and featured three home owners and their circumstances. You’ve no doubt seen more of this stuff than you care to remember and normally I wouldn’t spend anytime on this but one tale kind of touched a nerve. It involves Mike Galante […]

As Expected, A Bad Employment Report

The economy shed 652,000 jobs in February. The unemployment rate jumped to 8.1% and the augmented rate hit 14.8%. Here are a few comments from economists on the Wall Street Journal Real Time Economics blog: Job declines were widespread with losses in manufacturing and construction. The only bright spots remaining are health care & education, […]