Archive for December, 2009

Thoughts On Terrorism

It really isn’t necessary for Al Qaeda to bring down an airplane or accomplish some other that results in the death of American citizens or destruction of its property. Simply making the attempt, however futile and, yes ludicrous it is, seems to be sufficient to advance their cause. Over the weekend and today, talk radio, […]

The Cost Of Curing Negative Equity

This study from the New York Fed has been floating around parts of the blogosphere for the past couple of days. It’s an analysishome ownership rates and the effect of negative equity on the rate. I just got around to reading it and it’s worth your time. The authors contention is that the high rate […]

Low Interest Rates Start To Bite Savers

The NYT has a story that kind of states the obvious. As ultra low interest rates persist, those that rely on interest income from savings are getting squeezed. They offer a quote from Pimco’s Bill Gross which neatly states the status quo: “What the average citizen doesn’t explicitly understand is that a significant part of […]

Geithner’s Christmas Eve Surprise

As the Senate put the final touches on its plans to eventually nationalize health care in the country, the Obama administration via its Treasury Department quietly completed the government takeover of the housing industry. On Christmas Eve, Treasury announced that it would provide unlimited support to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for the next three […]

Merry Christmas

Recovery Realities.

So today we learned that the “recovery” wasn’t quite as strong as we originally supposed. In fact, when you dig through the numbers it didn’t amount to much at all. First, the facts. Third quarter GDP growth was downgraded from 3.5% (the initial estimate) to 2.2%, the current estimate. In between, it temporarily was placed […]

Sacrificing Principals For Health Care

Below are some thoughts I posted in late November. In light of the bribes that have floated through the Senate over the past couple of days in order to move the health care bill along, I thought I would put it up again. Here is a link to the most recent WSJ article on the payoffs. […]