Please make it stop! The Obama administration plans to give Chrysler $500 million to get it to the end of April and GM $5 billion to see them through May. From Reuters: The Obama administration will make about $500 million available to Chrysler LLC through the end of this month as it seeks to reach […]
Archive for April 20th, 2009
Geithner Rewrites The TARP Contracts
The WSJ has an article this evening based on an interview it did with Treasury Secretary Geithner. A lot of it is over-plowed ground but a couple comments jumped out at me that I want to pursue just a little. Indulge me. First, this is what he had to say about companies repaying TARP funds: […]
Take The Test
Think you know more about econ than high school seniors? Here are 18 questions pulled from the AP exam to test that hypothesis. Good Luck.
Too Much Hype For Chinese Electric Car Batteries
It appears as if all the talk of the Chinese having developed advanced batteries for electric cars might have been a bit premature. At the Shanghai Auto Show some experts were underwhelmed. “From what we have seen so far the technology is not that advanced in terms of battery life, range, and recharging,” said Nick […]
Bank Bondholders Now In The Governments Gun Sights
I don’t think that this is going to make Bill Gross happy. MarketWatch is reporting that the government is contemplating “incenting” bank preferred shareholders and bondholders to convert their interests to common equity. The government’s effort to convince bondholders and some preferred shareholders to convert their stakes to common shares is part of a larger […]
Are The Rich In Jeopardy?
The blogosphere has pretty much worn out the income inequality angle today. Most of the talk has focused on Gabriel Sherman’s New York Magazine piece about Wall Street high flyers lamenting their current circumstances. The sentiments that the newly disenfranchised master of the universe expressed in Sherman’s article were clearly over the top. They made […]
Economic Models Failing
This is interesting. The WSJ Real Times Economic blog has a post on the problems that economic models are running into in forecasting the recovery. The article points out that in September most models projected a smooth decline in economic activity rather than the sharp decline that occurred. Likewise, the projections for recovery project the […]