Back when Dave Barry still wrote a weekly column, Sandra and I had a Sunday morning tradition where I’d read the column out loud to her while she was getting ready for church. The highlight of each year was Dave’s annual recounting of the events of that year, in his own style. Well, he stopped […]
The New York Times has an outstanding and lengthy article tracing the rise of the Madoff investment firm that, in the end, turned out to be (in Madoff’s own words) a $50 billion Ponzi scheme: The juggernaut began to sputter this fall as investors, rattled by the financial crisis and reaching for cash, started taking […]
For those of you who missed it, in this downward spiral we are now enduring, the amount of leverage (read, debt) is directly related to how fast your bank is going to go under. Now from a blog named Infectious Greed, comes this chart extracted from a Bank of Canada report: So according to the […]
“Because Secretary Paulson had struggled in previous attempts to explain what the big banks and brokerage houses had done to the U.S. economy, his staff prepared a visual aid that told the story in clear and graphic terms.” Winner of Dave Barry’s caption contest for the above photo. ..bruce w..
Alan Kohler at the Business Spectator down in Australia does his best to explain CDOs, CDSs, and SPVs, then gets down to brass tacks: It is now getting very interesting. The three Icelandic banks have defaulted, as has Countrywide, Lehman and Bear Stearns. AIG has been taken over by the US Government, which is counted […]
Here’s a graph of US housing prices since 1975, both the stated prices and the same prices adjusted for inflation: As you can see, once you adjust for inflation, housing prices have peaked and then fallen three times in the last 30 years. I remember looking at a $35,000 house in the semi-rural area near […]
Hell, this makes more sense than a lot of what Congress and the US Treasury are doing right now: True fact: I own a Pets.com sock puppet. I keep it in my office to remind me of the idiocies of the late 90s Tech Bubble. Problem is, I’m not the one who needs reminding. Hat […]
Image o’ the day: At least the contribution is voluntary. Hat tip to The Consumerist. ..bruce w..
Statistics from Option Armageddon (click chart for a larger view): Any wonder that Citi needs a bailout?
