Lucre — You really should already know this one.
From the Financial Times:
US mortgage rates have soared this week in an unexpected reaction to the latest Treasury financial rescue plan, which has prompted investors to buy bank debt and sell bonds backed by home loans.
Interest rates on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages, as measured by Bankrate.com, rose to 6.38 per cent on Thursday from 5.87 per […]
…and like all of you, I could probably use a laugh about now.
“DOW drops 1000+ in last 3 sessions. The Bailout Goggles! They do nothing!”
–seen on a reddit.com headline mid-week.
“This is worse than a divorce. I’ve lost half my net worth and I still have a wife.”
–seen on The Times of London.
If anyone has […]
A previously-unknown Swiss guy, Yves Kilchenmann, contacted me out of the blue about buying my old domain, livesystems.com, and eventually we agreed upon a price, which is enough to put me into, for instance, a nice LEGO robotics set (actually a Danish product, but very possibly what I’m going to spend the money on).
Their building, […]
I’ve probably mentioned before my admiration for the great financial blog, Calculated Risk. They’ve done a terrific job of publicizing and quantifying the Doom.
There was a funny editorial cartoon referring to it, drawn by Eric G. Lewis, a freelance cartoonist living in Orange County, CA.
You need to know that Calculated […]
The promised long version of “The Week America’s Economy Almost Died”, the sequel to The Giant [Global] Pool of Money, has shipped!
Okay, for those keeping track, this market freeze-up has been compared, so far in our story, to an oncoming train, an abyss, a monster, and an earthquake. All we need now is […]
The terrific National Public Radio / Public Radio International team that brought you May’s fantastic story on the subprime meltdown, The Giant [Global] Pool of Money, have prepared a new show on the ongoing credit crisis to air this weekend on PRI’s This American Life.
It will be available for streaming or downloading shortly afterward, but […]
So there I was, reading random news reports about the horrible bailout bill, and thinking bitter thoughts about our ‘representatives’ in Congress, apparently heedless of the calls and faxes that have been running anywhere from 100-to-1 to 300-to-1 against (”They’re running 50% ‘No’, and 50% ‘Hell No!’”, as Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D-PA) put it).
And then, […]
From a Weiss Research white paper on the financial crisis:
Although it is true that the current debt crisis in America originated in the mortgage market, it is not accurate to say that the root of the crisis is strictly in this one sector. Rather, the debt crisis has multiple and varied roots, with excessive risk-taking […]
Well, wasn’t that a fun week! I’m sure that everybody is nicely worked up into a lather over the ever-larger and ever-more-frequent collapses this year. As economist Nouriel Roubini writes:
Even the Washington policy makers finally realized that this is the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression and that their ad hoc step-by-step and […]
Yes, you can speculate on whether or not the hilariously unqualified GOP VP pick, Sarah Palin, will step down before the election:
How? Click on the graph to go to InTrade, and press the Trade button.
Graph displays recent action; all times in UTC:
The price is labeled on the right-hand axis, showing implied percent chance that the […]