Floyd Norris shows us this morning that while virtually every facet of the private sector in America has been scaling back on debt, the Federal Government has rushed headlong into the breach to fill that void. From the New York Times: Rather than crowding out the private sector, Uncle Sam is now standing in for…
Floyd Norris
Hot Links: UNG, AT&T and Wal-Mart People
Hot Links for Weekend Reading… Think bankers are in low regard now? In 16th century Holland, they were banned from the church and treated like pawnbrokers and brothel keepers. (CreditSlips) Happy bicentennial to Elbridge Gerry, the man who ran the dollar printing presses to pay for the Civil War. (NYT) Big PR problems for AT&T‘s…
Roundtrip: Housing's Back to Square One
Was it fun for you? It’s been an amazing 8 year period for housing. Floyd Norris shows us how eerily similar the rise and fall of home prices and inflation have been: From the New York Times: During the period, the Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller 20-city composite index of home prices rose almost 21 percent….
Hot Links: Bling, the 90's, Wharton and American CEO's
Hot Links for Weekend Reading… What was the best post of the year in each of Knowledge@Wharton‘s first ten years? Here’s what David Merkel of the Aleph Blog thinks are the thirteen most important aspects to our current economy. The Wall Street Journal needs to look itself in the mirror after this one: The Bling Culture…
The Two Most Important Points From Today's Goldman Call
Goldman Sachs held an earnings conference call early this morning which was live-blogged by the New York Times‘ columnist Floyd Norris. Good, ’cause I had some Cookie Crisp cereal to eat right around that time. Congrat’s on your $5 billion capital raise, but I gots to feed the machine. There were two notable things on…
Hot Links: LOLFed, Bailout Nation & Bill Singer
Hot Links for Weekend Reading I confess, I am now officially a LOLFed junkie. This week, they gave us the NYSE’s new Dollar Menu, featuring items like Citigroup, Pier 1 and Vonage. Alyx, you rule. The week started with another bombshell (non) earnings report from AIG, the hedge fund that happens to be attached to…
Geithner Makes His First Impression…And It Sucks
As I watched the Dow Jones Industrial Average do that cascading-down-400-points thing that it’s gotten so good at, I listened in disbelief as our new Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner went through the whole litany of how we got to this point. Does anyone really need a recap of the last 18 months and what’s gone on? …
