Archive for August 14th, 2009

Friday Failures

Swinging her scythe far and wide this Friday, Ms. Bair took down the biggest bank so far this year and threw in four more just because she can. Here are the links: Community Bank of Nevada, Las Vegas, Nevada Community Bank of Arizona, Phoenix, Arizona Union Bank, National Association, Gilbert, Arizona Colonial Bank, Birmingham, Alabama Dwelling […]

Ending Up With Fine Print Despite Our Best Intentions

Here’s a good object lesson in why it is so difficult to write consumer disclosures. It’s from an article in HousingWire discussing the new RESPA regulations: But others say the questions fail to properly address all the concerns in the industry. Phillip Schulman, of K&L Gates — a law firm that practices in advising on private […]

Bloomberg’s Sketchy Report On Bank Failures

For some unknown reason, the Bloomberg article about potential bank failures is getting a lot of play today. The only reason I can think of as to why that should be is that it’s a slow news Friday. Yours truly and lots of others have been writing for sometime about the potential for lots of […]

Why Is Europe Recovering More Quickly?

The somewhat shocking news that Europe and particularly those two mixed-economy giants, France and Germany, appear to be emerging from their recession more swiftly than we are, has some free market types asking some atypical questions. First, if you haven’t seen it here from the WSJ is a quick look at what’s going on: Germany […]

Hard To See Recovery In These Numbers

Another day of economic data that doesn’t spell raging recovery. Industrial Production Capacity utilization increased slightly from 68.1% in June to 68.5% in July. Industrial production was up 0.5% which is the first increase in that number since December 2007. Manufacturing production was up 1% but that was almost entirely due to auto companies ramping […]