Thursday, December 17, 2009
I’m at the Senate Banking Committee hearing on the Ben Bernanke. I’ll keep a running tab.
Yes - 16
No - 7
Majority
Christopher Dodd, Chairman, Connecticut Yes
Tim Johnson, South Dakota Yes
Jack Reed, Rhode Island Yes
Chuck Schumer, New York Yes
Evan Bayh, Indiana Yes
Robert Menendez, New Jersey Yes
Daniel Akaka, Hawaii Yes
Sherrod Brown, Ohio Yes (soft may change on the floor)
Jon Tester, Montana Yes
Mark Warner, Virginia - Yes
Jeff Merkley, [...]
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Thursday, December 3, 2009
The WSJ reports…
~~~~”Morningstar Inc., the research firm known for its mutual-fund analysis, is now wading into the controversial realm of credit ratings.
The firm on Wednesday for the first time published credit ratings on about 100 companies using a similar alphabetical scale to major credit-ratings services like Standard & Poor’s, Moody’sCorp.’s Moody’s Investors Service and Fimalac SA’s [...]
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Thursday, December 3, 2009
If President Obama wants to be serious about financial reform there is an idea from our cousins across the pond … a “post bank” like the Japanese pre-privatization… (Update 12/5/09 — Japanese halt privatization of Japan Post Holdings Co)
Dovetail this idea with an results of a study released today by the FDIC which says that 25% [...]
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Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Presentation slides[PDF]
Speech by Adair Turner, Chairman, FSA
British Embassy, Paris
30 November 2009
The financial crisis of 2007/08 was the worst for at least 70 years. Economic catastrophe was only prevented by extreme policy responses: even with these responses, the world has faced huge economic cost. We must therefore identify the root causes as well as the symptoms.
To [...]
Thursday, November 26, 2009
The Real Story of the First Thanksgiving
By Benjamin Franklin (1785)
“There is a tradition that in the planting of New England, the first settlers met with many difficulties and hardships, as is generally the case when a civiliz’d people attempt to establish themselves in a wilderness country. Being so piously dispos’d, they sought relief from [...]
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Thursday, November 5, 2009
I’m attending a conference at the IMF on “Financial Frictions and Macroeconomic Adjustment”
First panel:
Panel Chair: Jonathan D. Ostry (Deputy Director, Research Department, IMF)
First paper:
Household Leverage and the Recession of 2007 to 2009
Atif Mian (University of Chicago and NBER) and Amir Sufi (University of Chicago and NBER)
Discussant: Kevin Lansing (Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco)
Kevin Lansing mentioned [...]
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
America’s largest banks are the prime underwriters of muni debt and swaps… this area of the market has been a particularly abusive part of Wall Street.
Their behavior against municipalities is a charge against them in the discussion of whether they should be broken up.
There are many stories of predatory behavior towards municipal officials… muni swaps are [...]