Fannie and Freddie’s Future - Reaction to Paulson Speech with Vince Reinhart, Former Fed Official on Monetary Affairs: GSEs as Private Firms with Public Purpose Don’t Work; Paulson Favors Utility-Like Companies to Replace GSEs
January 08, 2009
We all agree that pessimism is a mark of superior intellect. —John Kenneth Galbraith
Initial Jobless Claims totaled 614k, 1k less than expected but the prior month was revised up by 3k to 630k. Continuing Claims fell by 53k from last week and was 38k less than expected. There has been a big discussion of late over the expiration of unemployment insurance and how the recent drop in Continuing Claims is due to people losing it rather than finding a new job. While there is no question benefits are expiring without one finding a job, as evidenced by the rising exhaustion rate, many losing those benefits now started getting them when initial claims were...
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January 8th, 2009 at 3:07 pm
> Paulson Favors Utility-Like Companies to Replace GSEs
Good start - now how about utility-like BANKS, as Taleb promotes, so that banks will do what they are supposed to do, e.g. lend money, facilitate transactions, and NOT do what they aren’t supposed to, not lend money and crash the global economy every 50 years or so.