Bailout and Financial Crisis News

Washington is patting itself on the back for having orchestrated an amazing economic recovery. But Washington lawmakers are a delusional bunch of boneheads, say Marc Faber and Mike “Mish” Shedlock, editor of the Gloom, Boom, and Doom Report and investment advisor at SitkaPacific Capital Management, respectively. The economy is NOT recovering, they say, and the U.S. [...]

Forbes released its infamous billionaire rankings this week, and it points to a trend away from America dominating the list to new countries making appearances. In the economic version of an Olympic medal count, countries outside the U.S., EU, and BRIC states are finally making a showing. Here we’ve profiled the top 20 billionaires from our MAVINS [...]

Carlos Slim, a veritable Latin America tycoon, has beaten out America’s own tycoon Warren Buffett, plus Bill Gates, to become the world’s richest man. Perhaps it is a sign of the times, whereby the wealthiest start to emerge from emerging economic regions, but some might have expected the richest man to emerge from Asia given all [...]

By Amy Stevens After Planet Money burst upon the scene and proceeded to win nearly every major award in broadcasting, NPR figured this wildly successful team of brilliant reporters could use some…. supervision. Really? But I wasn’t one to argue. Here was an opportunity to work at one of America’s premier news organizations, with some of the [...]

1) Ryan Avent: Fiscal policy: The “treading water” stimulus: HERE is some food for thought, via Tyler Cowen: “This note shows that the aggregate fiscal expenditure stimulus in the United States, properly adjusted for the declining fiscal expenditure of the fifty states, was close to zero in 2009. While the Federal government stimulus prevented a net [...]

Staff bloggers at The Economist have been speculating on the decline of the American economic superpower and sound like they might enjoy welcoming America to the club of fallen empires: Underlying all this is the question: Who cares? If America loses its position as the world’s largest and most powerful economy does it really [...]

Slip a derivative and this argument, summarized here in 1844 by John Stuart Mill, is Michael Mussa’s argument against providing a lexicographic preference to inflation targeting: John Stuart Mill on The Currency Question: Within the last few years another doctrine has sprung up, of which Colonel Torrens was, as we have said, the originator, Mr. Loyd, [...]

I was astounded to read in the NYTimes that Bill Perkins, state senator from Harlem, opposes charter schools: Over the last decade, as charter schools have multiplied, Mr. Perkins has undergone a dramatic shift and emerged as their most outspoken critic in the Legislature, writing guest columns in newspapers and delivering impassioned speeches criticizing the “privatization” [...]

Clive Crook, February 10, 2009: Fiscal stimulus: repent at leisure: The administration was right to press for a big fiscal stimulus, I think, and it is better to have the bill that emerged from Congress than none. (The FT called it ugly but necessary: I couldn’t have put it better myself.) Still, if ever a rushed [...]

(This post comes courtesy of the Mad Hedge Fund Trader) Something Amazing is Happening With the Payroll Figures. The February non-farm payroll showed a further loss of 36,000 jobs, versus an expected loss of 75,000, and the unemployment rate remained unchanged at 9.7%. December was revised up by 41,000 and January was revised down by 6,000, [...]

« Previous entries