Archive for June 29th, 2009

Obama Gets Tough On Lightbulbs

I guess this goes under the heading of leaving no stone unturned but if I were President Obama I would have let someone else make this announcement. President Obama announced tougher energy efficiency requirements for certain types of fluorescent and incandescent lighting on Monday, the latest step in the administration’s push to cut the country’s […]

PPIP For Community Banks?

The Wall Street Journal had a front page article today on the PPIP, analyzing why it has failed to get off the ground and suggesting that the failure was thwarting efforts to help smaller banks. As you probably recall the PPIP was originally going to attack two problems. Legacy securities and legacy loans at banks. […]

Mankiw Tires Of Krugman

Greg Mankiw seems to have had enough of Paul Krugman. In a post today he had a rather pointed rejoinder to Krugman’s latest missive directed towards him: In a brief blog post on healthcare, Paul Krugman says that George Will and I are “either remarkably ignorant or simply disingenuous.” I cannot speak for George, but I can […]

Billy Mays

Billy Mays ordering breakfast at McDonalds. They guy was a great salesman. The sense of self-deprecating humor you see in this clip is probably one of the things that made him so successful.

Wage Deflation: Is The Government Missing The Numbers?

I was at a small family gathering last night (don’t worry, I’m not going to bore you with tales of the newest baby in the family) and virtually every adult there had just experienced a forced reduction in income. A school teacher/counselor is having her salary cut 6.5% and class size increased by 50%. An […]

National Banks Now Have To Answer To The States

As if banks didn’t have enough on their plate with multiple regulators, the Supreme Court just gave them 50 more to deal with. The Supremes ruled that federally chartered banks were indeed subject to state laws and that an attorney general could take them to court to enforce those laws. From the NYT: The justices […]

China’s Bank Lending Spree

There were a couple of very good analyses this weekend of China’s banking system and some perceived mistakes that the country’s rulers have made in their attempts to right the economy. Neither is particularly bullish for China or for that matter the rest of us. First, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in the Telegraph talks about the growing […]