Donald Maron has a great post on Treasury securities and the current maturity schedule. It’s short and too the point. Bottom line, the Treasury has been financing the current deficit with short dated securities which makes good sense but sooner or later you have to lengthen them as rates rise. Maron has a good suggestion […]
Archive for September, 2009
Paul Volcker Sounds Off
Thank God we still have Paul Volcker out there throwing out a few straight comments from time to time. In an era when the likes of Tim Geithner can speak volumes and put themselves on record on both sides of every issue, it’s refreshing to see the great man speak his mind. Today, some comments […]
Case-Shiller, FHA And Home Prices
I’ll jump back into posting with a few thoughts on housing. First, Case-Shiller as out with its July home price survey. It followed the trend of improving prices established over the last couple of months. Nationwide prices were up 1.6% and the number of cities showing price declines dwindled to just two. Here are the […]
Back To Blogging
Well I’m back–sort of. Posting will resume albeit in a slightly different manner. Let me explain. Early this month two unmomentous events occurred. One, I found myself seriously broke and two I came to the conclusion that despite increasing readership and syndication of my posts, I was writing a lot of serious crap. I was […]
Fed President Hoenig: Still Need To Address The Debt Issue
Throughout the recession one of the more outspoken members of the Fed has been Thomas Hoenig, the President of the Kansas City Fed. Refreshingly, he continues to speak his mind and not shy from the harder issues that most in government prefer not to address. In a speech that was given to the Kansas Association […]
G20 Opts To Pursue Tougher Capital Standards
The statement from the G20 Finance Ministers meeting in London would appear to constitute a win for Tim Geithner and Alistair Darling. I use the word appears because it is always wise not to take these sorts of pronouncements at anything more than face value. At any rate, the statement seems to indicate that the […]
Wall Street’s Ghoulish New Business
Those lovable Wall Street ghouls have cooked up a new asset class to securitize — life insurance policies. I am not kidding you, they’re going into the business of buying life insurance policies from sick people, pooling them and then selling the securities to investors. The NYT has the story: The bankers plan to buy […]