I have been warning now for several weeks that the second big round of financial stress has been gathering strength, carefully picking it’s time to emerge and unfold. This week the European Union will hold a summit to try and chart a course out of the death spiral that many EU member nations now find […]
There’s a great article over at Wired.com by Felix Salmon called “Recipe for Disaster: The Formula That Killed Wall Street”. In it, Salmon traces the history of David X. Li and his Gaussian copula function (see above) that led investment firms worldwide to pour trillions of dollars into complex — and, as it turned out, […]
Geldpress breaks it down for you, with actual numbers: Hat tip to Conservative Grapevine. ..bruce w..
Thanks to Ron Smith for this cartoon form the San Diego Union Tribune
In a noticeable and welcome break from downward pointing leading indicators, we have an important one headed upward. The dry bulk shipping index, which measures how much stuff is being sent over the oceans, actually had an upturn. This was one of the earliest things to crash, as companies around the world suddenly came to […]
Synchronicity strikes again. Even as the Senate moves towards passing what may be the single worst and most disasterous piece of legislation in our generation, I happened to turn on TCM this evening and found the 1959 film version of “Li’l Abner” (itself based on the 1956 Broadway musical). Just a few minutes ago, a […]
Imagine, all of this squalor could be yours, you lucky US IBM employees! In case you are not a technology worker, over the past 15 years an increasing number of skilled jobs in this country have been going to (largely) Indian workers who come to this country on what is known as an H1B visa. […]
First it was the NY Times editorial telling Tom Daschle that he needed to step down as the Obama Administration nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services — which Daschle did the same day the editorial came out, specifically citing the Times as he did so (“I read the New York Times this morning…”). […]
Yeah, this pretty much sums it up: Hat tip to Mark Hemingway at the Corner at the National Review Online. ..bruce w..
Now that they are beginning to see that the original bailouts and TARP is not working, your government is preparing yet another exotic scheme to try and rescue the financial industry. From the Financial Times: US set for ‘big bang’ financial clean-up Barack Obama is gearing up for a “big bang” announcement next week that […]
