John Carney has a really smart post over at Clusterstock regarding the pricing of credit default swaps for Campbell Soup, JPMorgan and the US government. In case you haven’t been following all of this, the cost to insure credit risk on Campbell Soup and this country are essentially the same while the cost to insure […]
Archive for August, 2009
Life Isn’t Fair
Sadly, the prospect of poverty has forced me back into the employment swamp pool and will be limiting the amount of time that I have for blogging. While I would have preferred to spend my days scanning the news and opining thereon, our free market economy doesn’t generally allow for such things. Adjusting to my […]
Texting And Driving Don’t Mix
Sometimes things are so obvious that one is inclined to wonder why there’s even a need for debate. This is one of those: From the NYT: An organization of state highway safety officials on Monday plans to call for a ban on texting while driving, joining a growing chorus of legislators and safety advocates endorsing such […]
Chicago PMI Indicated Expansion
The Chicago PMI came in at 50.0 for July. It registered 43.4 in July. Quite a jump and remember anything at 50 or above indicates expansion. No second derivative, we’re bleeding more slowly kind of stuff. All of the components that are used to calculate the final number showed improvement and two — Production and […]
News You Never Needed
Is this a symptom of a slow news day or merely what we have to look forward to this fall and winter as the swine flu reappears. From Fox Business: Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has contracted the H1N1 or “swine flu” virus and is receiving treatment at the presidential residence in Bogota, reports said Sunday. […]
Bigger Safer Banks May Be The Way To Go
The blogosphere has been preoccupied this weekend by the WaPo article about the big banks getting bigger in the wake of the financial crisis. The predominant sentiment seems to be that this is a bad thing. All of the talk reminded me of a post that John Hempton who writes the excellent Bronte Capital blog […]