January 30, 2009
The NYT's Dealbook has obtained a copy of John Paulson of hedge fund Paulson & Co.'s year-end letter, and it is a must-read. Paulson blew the doors off last year, heavily shorting financials, both directly and via credit default swaps,...
Nice quote from Thomas Sowell on slow stimulus programs: "Using long, drawn-out processes to put money into circulation to meet an emergency is like mailing a letter to the fire department to tell them that your house is on fire." ...
The rebalancing of U.S. spending and savings continues (CR) Could JPMorgan be forced to make good on more Madoff liabilities than expected (NYT) The Taleb0ian “Make Bankers Accountable” Facebook group is promoting pulling bonuses back from bankers (Facebook) Top...
An interesting way of visualizing World Economic Forum fascinations in Davos this year: By sessions oversubscribed and/or with waiting lists....
You just can’t make this stuff up: The Justice Department says it foiled a plot by a fired Fannie Mae contract worker in Maryland to destroy all the data on the mortgage giant's 4,000 computer servers nationwide. The U.S. Attorney's...
The folks at consumer financial management service Mint have (I like to think partly at my continued urging) released some aggregated data about the financial health of their users. They have a window into spending and savings via live data...
[via Jake at Econompic]...
Click for larger version. [via FT] [Update] The Dresdner folks from whom the FT got the chart made a whopper of an error in the first version of this chart, with Ireland at more than double the ratio of debt...
In responding to a post here today, it struck me that the following is something I point out all the time in talks, but have never actually said here: When asked for examples of where Keynesian stimulus in its purest...
From Nathan at FlowingData who brought us a fascinating animated map of the growth of Wal-mart over time, something similar with Target. It takes us from the first Target store in 1962 in Roseville, Minnesota, to today's 1,600 stores. Wonderful...
Spain’s Recession Deepens (afoe) Historical Chart Of Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) (TradersNarrative) Roubini with a proposal to prevent wholesale financial failure (FT) Why this hysteria about sterling is misplaced (FT) Japan heads for worst post-war slump (Bloomberg) Global crisis...
According to the latest American Association of Railroads data for the three weeks ending Jan 24, 2009, commercial rail traffic continues to crash in the U.S. Leading the list is railcar loads of motor vehicles, which are off an incredible...
This had to happen eventually. Zimbabwe has decided to allow Zimbabweans to conduct transactions in other currencies, not just the Zimbabwe dollar. The upshot: In the face of hyperinflation-induced irrelevance, the country is abandoning its currency. "In line with the...
One major piece of market-moving news Friday will likely be the U.S. Q4 2008 GDP estimate. Keeping in mind that –5.4% is the consensus, where do you think the Q4 GDP number will come in? Note: "<-5.4%" means you think...
