October 15, 2008
Apparently it wasn't enough that British Prime Minister Gordon Brown took the global lead on recapitalizing the biggest banks during this credit crisis. He has also now decided to call a meeting of world leaders to create new rules for...
Nighttime skies in San Diego are less lit than in some other cities, but it's still a shock when you get outside the city at night and see the tapestry of stars overhead. There is a good piece on the...
I mostly agree with a new OpEd from the people over at Peterson Institute. Here is the crux: The Treasury should abandon plans to buy troubled assets (this can be handled by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as necessary) and...
The smart and thoughtful FT columnist Martin Wolf was on Charlie Rose last night:...
Here is the quote of the day: Our ability to trade complex assets has completely surpassed our ability to understand those assets. - Philip Moyer, Edgar Online Only in securities markets would something so obvious -- and true --...
Some quick links to items of interest: Finger-pointing: It was the derivatives (Portfolio) Data Scraping Wikipedia with Google Spreadsheets (Source) Finger-pointing: It was the regulators' fault (WashPost) China calls post-Olympic time-out on commodity buying (BreakingViews) Citadel CDS spreads widening out...
Nice updated graph here -- and one sure to irritate the crap out of people -- comparing the Nasdaq, oil, and oil "bubbles". [via Bespoke Premium]...
Markets are amazing discounting machines -- they just don't always discount anything useful or important. Case in point: Their belated discovery today that not only are we in a consumer-led recession, but that said recession is going to continue and...
The folks at SmartMoney have newly added me to their Power 30 list. That's awfully nice of them. In all honesty, I don't feel like I warrant a full slot, maybe a fractional one, but I'll just accept the...
Should have mentioned it sooner, but I was on CNBC The Call today from 11am to noon EST. This is a weekly thing for me, so I regularly forget to mention it. The gist: We talked economics/layoffs (I argued we...
The ECB is really opening up in terms of collateral it accepts for loans: The Eurosystem will lower the credit threshold for marketable and non-marketable assets from A- to BBB-, with the exception of asset-backed securities (ABS), and impose a...
Just curious, but is anyone planning to 'fess up on the Lehman-related CDS losses last week? As I wrote last Thursday, there was oodles of worry about the auction, with some people tossing out apocalyptic numbers, the highest of which...
A typically literate and lovely column from Edward Chancellor in the FT today. It is on the historical parallels and context for the current credit crisis/panic, and it is wonderfully rich historical reading. Every panic is marked by a sense...
Nice presentation showing the credit crisis's arrival and mutations via a series of Economist magazine covers: The Economist Covers - The Financial Crisis Evolution View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: japan usa) [via Jan Schultink]...
From the "more things change, the more they stay the same" file, an excerpt from a Thomas Jefferson letter in 1819:...
According to an intermittently interesting WSJ story tonight, Wells Fargo was the only bank Monday to fight the idea of signing up to a preferred share deal with the U.S. Treasury. It pushed back, Treasury pushed harder and the deal...
Time for another contest. Along with Fred Wilson, Mark Cuban, and Hal Varian, I am judging a competition at Slideshare. The idea: Come up with the best description/fix/forecast for the credit crisis in 30 slides -- or less. Enter the...
