Henry Blodget has a good post with a couple of great graphs addressing the trends in federal revenues and expenditures. I’ll borrow the graphs and then offer a couple of comments: Now, those sorts of numbers have been published before in one form or another but these two do a good job of bringing home […]
Archive for January, 2010
The Breakdown Of The American Employment Model
Via the Glittering Eye, I was directed to this post on the breakdown of the American employment model. It’s an inciteful piece of writing that’s going to leave you with a lot to think about. Here is the opening: Here in the quiet precincts of the stately Mead manor in exclusive Queens, as the dew […]
State Of The Union And Other Thoughts
Since I once again didn’t get the chance to blog much this week, I’ll take the lazy man’s option and reprise the events. You gotta start with the State of the Union address. As usual, Obama delivered a masterful speech. He always does. Unfortunately, seventy minutes of great oratory contained little substance. Instead we were […]
Friday Failures
Not much time to blog this week but I hope to make up for it a little bit over the weekend. Nevertheless, we can’t ignore the latest forays of Madame Bair. This week she lopped off the heads of five more banks, bringing the yearly total to 15. Here’s the link to her site. It’s […]
The Implications Of The Stuytown Default
In many respects, the non-news of the day was the decision by Tishman Speyer Properties to hand back to the lenders its Peter Cooper Village and Stuyvesant Town apartment complex. This particular train wreck has been a foregone conclusion for the better part of a year. Yet, it generated considerable attention in the blogosphere. Why […]
Let Them Watch Spring Training (Apologies To Marie Antoinette)
Never let it be said that politicians in Arizona or probably for that matter elsewhere don’t have their eye on the ball. This from the Arizona Republic needs little embellishment: The City of Mesa is trying to keep the Cubs in town. The Mesa City Council took the controversial step of agreeing to build the […]
Fraud Is Alive, Well And Flourishing In The Real Estate Industries
Diana Olick had two important posts this week (here and here) that didn’t get nearly the attention they deserve. Both exposed fraudulent schemes to hide payments to second lien holders in short sales. Essentially, Olick exposed what would appear to be a growing practice of not disclosing payments to second lien holders on the HUD […]