10 Links: Monday Edition
Some less-than-green-shoots seem to be causing consternation today amongst the run&gun crowd. Here are 10 items worth your time:
• For FDIC, Friday Means Failures (The Deal) Each Friday night, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. preps its SWAT teams of regulators to fan out and secure more banks. No one other than FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair and her staff know for certain who’s next after 72 banks failed this year, almost 3 times as many as last year’s 25. see also BB&T Acquires Colonial as Regulators Close Five U.S. Lenders (Bloomberg)
• Behavioral Economist Richard Thaler on the Health Care debate (NYT)
• America’s Japanese banks (Rolfe Winkler) A banking system loaded down with hundreds of billions of dollars worth of unrecognized bad debt — Japan in the 1990s? No, it’s the United States today. And where are American banks hiding their losses? In loan portfolios.
• Poll: 57% don’t see stimulus working (USA TODAY/Gallup Poll) 57% of adults say the stimulus package is having no impact on the economy or making it worse. Even more —60% — doubt that the stimulus plan will help the economy in the years ahead, and only 18% say it has done anything to help improve their personal situation.
• Weak consumer spending will last for years (naked capitalism)
• What’s luck got to do with it? The math of gambling (New Scientist) When Thorp stood at the roulette wheel in the summer of 1961 there was no need for nerves – he was armed with the first “wearable” computer, one that could predict the outcome of the spin. Once the ball was in play, Thorp fed the computer information about the speed and position of the ball and the wheel using a microswitch inside his shoe.
• The USG doesn’t need foreigners to finance the US fiscal deficit? Who knew? (China Financial Markets)
• Pandora’s Boombox RIPPED: How the Wired Generation Revolutionized Music (NYT) “Ripped” ranges from the days when the record companies gnashed their teeth over the growth of home taping, to music publishers’ blunt attacks on sampling in hip-hop, to the life, death and canonization of Napster, to the iPod and beyond. It also examines the constant consolidation — in the music companies, in radio, in concert promotion — that helped lead to the industry’s implosion.
• How the brain hard-wires us to love Google, Twitter, and texting. And why that’s dangerous For humans, this desire to search is not just about fulfilling our physical needs. Humans can get just as excited about abstract rewards as tangible ones. He says that when we get thrilled about the world of ideas, about making intellectual connections, about divining meaning, it is the seeking circuits that are firing.
• CNBC: ‘Anyone Who Owns A Suit Can Come On Television’ (The Onion) Citing a need to provide quality programming 24 hours a day, CNBC has extended an invitation to anyone who owns a suit to drop by the financial news network and be a guest expert, cohost a show with Larry Kudlow, or do whatever.
Anything worthwhile I am missing?
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August 17th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
A follow up to Barry’s Hampton’s post yesterday. I guess all is not well.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/constructionandproperty/6040965/Houses-go-for-a-song-in-the-Hamptons.html
August 17th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
Oh I’ve been waiting all day to link this…
Clever cat earns ‘high school diploma’ online
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32420644/ns/tech_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/
Time to “short” Apollo Group?
August 17th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
I believe it was late June when my favourite talking head Jim Cramer said to buy Lowe’s and the housing market had bottomed.
From Marketwatch:
“Profits were down 19% from a year ago and sales fell about $500 million short of expectations. The company is also pulling back on planned store openings, taking a $48 million pre-tax hit rather than risk an even bigger hit should those stores fail to sell enough to justify their existence.”
“But here’s what really hurts. Lowe’s rosiest full-year earnings estimate is now less than what analysts had been forecasting. This is both disappointing and bad timing, keeping alive fears raised Friday by a lousy U.S. consumer confidence report which, by the way, now points to sales in the third quarter.”
August 17th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
Interesting article about notable individuals (Dean Baker, Krugman, etc.) recent home purchasing decisions:
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-bubble-timers17-2009aug17,0,6997492.story?page=2
August 17th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
Regarding BB&T, interesting how they have offered $750 million stock offering after buying Colonial’s assets.
http://www.reuters.com/article/companyNews/idUSBNG44787320090817
August 17th, 2009 at 2:36 pm
I was curious to see if this URL was taken, and unsurprisingly, it has been. Looks interesting……
http://www.knifecatchers.com/blog/
August 17th, 2009 at 2:39 pm
I don’t know if this guy owns a suit (and I’d be a bit afraid to ask), but I think he’d fit right in at CNBC and would certainly boost their ratings:
http://www.youtube.com/user/walstreetpro2
(I’m going to keep on pushing to have him either replace Cramer on Mad Money or become his homicidal co-host until somebody in power takes the hint and makes the offer).
August 17th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
bergsten: I think he’s one of the Red State Update guys. They produce some hilarious stuff:
http://www.redstateupdate.com/video
This one is timely
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXStth4SI2E
August 17th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
At the risk of starting a religious war, I’m posting a link to an article I found interesting.
The basic thesis is that all the big software companies are moving their software and services to the Cloud and that this is necessary in the coming decade. The guy who runs the Windows Supersite, but who loves his iphone and uses macs, keeps talking about how MSFT has to really ramp up it’s efforts at cloud computing to stay relevant. And it has been doing so in a big way. He’s never mentioned much in the way of Apple’s efforts, excetp for making fun of Mobile Me. The question is why Apple should be immune from this necessity? Will Apple be forced to morph into a cell phone/tablet company offering cloud services? Can this be as profitable as what it’s got now?
http://www.windowslive.com:80/Connect/Post/e7a1e9f9-9cd7-4b07-92ba-8be046cc20d7
August 17th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
Re: Thaler article
I think Thaler accurately sums up the BS so far. IMO, the “Truth” is that the public option is designed to be a trojan horse that will supplant existing managed care frameworks precisely by being able to make bulk contract purchases to keep costs down. Thaler succinctly forces the issue: an extensive public option makes sense only if you’re in whole hog. I’m in favor of national health care but the public debate has been pathetic and the White House has shown an astounding lack of gusto in supporting what was supposed to be the centerpiece of this administration. Shockingly — amazingly — weak leadership.
August 17th, 2009 at 3:07 pm
Re: the twitter link…
addenum”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32408652/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/
excerpt: “This just in: 40.55 percent of Twitter tweets are “Pointless Babble.”
—
No really? Get right out of town!
August 17th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
@Transor: I think the campaign theme should have been either:
“Incremental Change We Can Believe In”
or
“Yes, We Can..Have Half Measures”.
August 17th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
@Manny:
LOL
Has anybody parodied the Shepard Fairey “Hope” poster by substituting “Hype”?
August 17th, 2009 at 3:14 pm
The Onion thing was funny. The Thaler link also very good.
I thought the article on page C6 of today’s WSJ was interesting regarding the US household treasury purchases. Where will the future demand for govies come from, well, if the market goes down again, from us of course.
August 17th, 2009 at 3:15 pm
I was struck by how similar the chart of(one measure of)income inequality looks to the chart of total debt as a % of GDP. Almost as though they’re related.
http://www.financialarmageddon.com/2009/08/not-too-hard.html
I recall a quote by someone about how inflation benefits those who get the money first at the expense of those who get the money last. I think it was von Mises or one of the other Austrians. The wealthy have easier access to credit, especially early in the credit cycle, so the benefit more on the upswing. Not sure that this holds in reverse, though, since by the end of the cycle, everybody is leveraged and those on the lower end of the spectrum are most vulnerable as credit contracts. Even without the theorizing, the correspondence between the charts is interesting I thought…
August 17th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
You forgot this gem from Carney:
http://www.businessinsider.com/did-women-cause-the-recession-2009-8
Who knew? It wasn’t the CRA it was chicks.
August 17th, 2009 at 3:26 pm
Transor, Ask and ye shall receive:
http://www.notmytribe.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/obama-hope-hype.jpg
August 17th, 2009 at 3:27 pm
@bonghiteric: The “blame the minority” (CRA) didn’t stick, so it’s onto the next item on the list.
August 17th, 2009 at 3:40 pm
Greg Kot’s a great critic and a good guy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoMGDW0QADQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9cyw61q7cE
Thaler uses the ridiculous Fuchs’ argument dismissing Medicare as an example of a gov’t program that works is because Medicare doesn’t need marketing …by extrapolating back from a so-called public plan that Fuchs claims would need marketing. Medicare works.
In fact, Obama should give the GOP some of their own medicine and show the GOP arguments against many of the proposals could be used just as easily against Medicare… and you don’t want that taken away.
August 17th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
Mike – cloud computing is definitely become more popular but it is in no way the guaranteed path most of business computing is headed toward. This follows behind Distributed Computing and workstation terminals starting back as far as the mid 90′s. Various companies have been pushing toward this for well over a decade.
August 17th, 2009 at 3:50 pm
Thor:
not talking about business. I wouldn’t keep my stuff in the cloud. Talkng about the consumer end where Apple mostly plays.
August 17th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more managed looking S&P than I have today. It’s as close to a straight line as it could possibly be. Liquidity is the driver. I’m still thinking big drop to below S&P900 followed by short squeeze and return to past S&P1000. Then, at end of October, it’s a different game.
This is to manage interest rates for housing purposes and, presumable, to follow the Fed’s mandate to fight inflation (HA HA)
August 17th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
In fact, in October, there might be a final market crash to lower rates and subsidize housing, followed by a last gasp of Fed liquidity pumped into the market for a last hurrah at patching up 401k accounts and trying to revive consumer credit and spending.
August 17th, 2009 at 4:09 pm
Cloud computing is being way WAY overhyped. It will have some effect, but by no means will it (or should it) become the standard… lest we will have to learn yet another lesson in the value of decentralization and diversification.
August 17th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
In fact, if R Crumb was into monetary economics, I would love to see his take on The Fed’s Last Gasp this October.
August 17th, 2009 at 4:15 pm
A thousand years ago, we called this application-cloud-stuff “timesharing.”
The benefits to vendors are clear — a new way to charge people to use applications, right down to “per use.” Yet another way to snoop into everything you have and do. Harder-to-steal intellectual property (theirs, not yours). A whole new slew of hardware to support the interface and protocols (which, I’ll bet anything cost EXACTLY as much as PC’s do now).
The benefits to end-users are less clear. Perhaps “green” power savings (we pay 44 cents per KWh, business pays 10 cents). Perhaps it gets the few remaining computer-illiterate people onto the web (lucky them). Maybe some “value add” to couch potatoes. Possibly the bleeding edge of closer-to-virtual-reality games, social networks, etc.
The issues are horrendous — zero privacy, uncertain reliability, spotty access (easily withheld), nibbled-to-death-by-ducks incremental costs. More (directed) advertising — lower quality of “life.”
Steve Jobs should just LOVE it!
August 17th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
@Pool Shark: Thanks! At my age you stop remembering what’s your own original thought and what you probably saw in passing on the internet somewhere six months ago. ;)
August 17th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
Even cloud services that partially reside on your company’s own servers can be problematic. You own the data but have fun accessing it — or more precisely, have fun querying the data to download when it’s encoded with proprietary software.
August 17th, 2009 at 4:22 pm
That piece of crap “article”, “Did Women Cause the Recession?”, is such an inflammatory, worthless hit job. Don’t we have enough problems without stirring up divisive issues like this? Good grief. This guy is just reeking of spite.
Let me guess; he had a bad marriage and an ugly divorce. Get over it and stop trying to poison the entire well.
If you want to write a real article exploring the socioeconomic phenomena that is playing out in this disparate job loss situation, great. But just venting your spleen and coming off as an angry bitter guy is just pathetic.
August 17th, 2009 at 4:23 pm
Re: the cloud
I think you guys are talking from the viewpoint of knowledgeable, experienced users. But look at all the mass craziness in which no one cares particualrly about privacy or security even if they had some comprehensionof the issues, e.g. Facebook and Twitter. Just think of 90% of the computing public as being as knowledgeable about computing as they are about the financial markets :)
August 17th, 2009 at 4:27 pm
I’m certainly no expert, but doesn’t cloud computing just sound a lot like mainframe and terminal computing of 30 years ago? Didn’t we move away from that and to desktop computing for a reason?
I can see some utility in the cloud computing model, but I don’t think that the centralized model is the way to go at large.
August 17th, 2009 at 4:27 pm
Cloud computing. Great idea. Put your most private shit on someone else’s computer and maybe pay to get at it later. As opposed to using some perfectly great open source software and maybe an external file server for community access.
Treat you PC as a dumb terminal. Great idea.
Guess what?? ‘Cloud Computing’ is just a new vocabulary term. It’s just a take off from the old mainframe – dumb terminal setup of several decades ago, except you get to use windowed software instead of text based computing to access the mainframe. And your PC get to process the data before and/or after the mainframe gets to it.
Plus, as I said before, total strangers get access to your personal files. Of course, they don’t care about anything personal that might be in them.
August 17th, 2009 at 4:32 pm
If you need access to your own files on the road, then create a VPN using open source software. Christ, why you ask someone at the end of an anonymous IP address to be your caretaker?
August 17th, 2009 at 4:34 pm
@DH:
Shit, as it is you’ve got “sploggers” stripping visible content off of blogs right now to sell spam products. I just had my first experience submitting DMCA complaints to two domain registrars to get my stuff taken down. Just imagine what they can mine just taking info trusting naive folks put out there for all to see.
August 17th, 2009 at 4:44 pm
Well, guys, welcome to the 21st century. This time it’s different :)
Look at how many people use Yahoo Mail, Hotmail and Gmail. None of use would think of those as private, but many people use them as their primary email for business, e.g. Nigerian 419′ers. Google is pushing people to upload all their pics, and files and use things like picassa and Google’s web oriented competitors to Word and Exel. Many are doing it.
Some well known websites (forget which at the moment) are run from Amazon Storage where all the user data is kept. BTW, Amazon storage provides really cheap reliable backup if you have a program that makes it automatic and encrypts it all before sending it up. I use Jungledisk, but there are others.
It’s the future.
August 17th, 2009 at 4:45 pm
LB’s three favorite female investors are all bearish now: Danielle Park, Janet Tavakoli and of course Our Karen:
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/janet-tavakoli-talks-her-book-and-cashes-out
Peep, when Bazza has a links post, methinks he is looking for links, not rants or OT comments?
Usually there is a long amorphous “market thread” every day where we can rant, tease and be witty. Be good.
August 17th, 2009 at 4:45 pm
How many pieces of personal information can you extract from this chatty little family blog entry?
———————–
August 17, 2009
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, AUNT SUE!
Happy birthday Susan Randall Jones! You’re 74 today. You’ve come a long way baby from your days in Missoula! We love you! And how is Uncle Reggie? We’re really pulling for him to get over his prostate cancer and get back to his bowling and woodcarving. I’m sure your neighbors on Elm Street can’t wait to see him revving his Harley up and down early on Sunday morning. (Just let them sue you again!) You’re the best. Can’t wait to see you at the end of the month for Ramadan. The boys keep asking for you.
ETC., ETC., ETC.
———————————-
Full name: Susan Randall Jones
DOB: 8/17/1935
Place of Birth: Missoula, MT (?)
Residence: Elm Street, CITY, STATE
Spouse: Reginald/Reggie, cancer patient
Religion: Muslim
August 17th, 2009 at 4:46 pm
oops – meant “none of you”
August 17th, 2009 at 4:51 pm
Speak of the devil! LOL
Largest-ever identity theft scheme busted, officials say
http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2009/08/17/govt_man_tried_to_steal_130m_credit_card_numbers/
August 17th, 2009 at 5:05 pm
As another example: Have a client who is a dealer for some well known Japanese electronics companies. Small store, but they do a lot of mail order. I run the email remotely. They get a lot of business mailHe brought his son in as 2nd in command and asked me to set up his email. The son, of course uses gmail and decided he was gonna just have all his email from the store forwarded to gmail. Not much I can do about it once it goes into his pop account exept throw up my hands. Like the markets, 90+% of the people don’t get the dangers.
August 17th, 2009 at 5:14 pm
If you’re interested, here’s the Amazon web storage page: http://aws.amazon.com/
They have some quite sophisticated tools and more storage that you can shake a stick at.
Sorry to sorta hijack the thread. Will stop talking about this now.
August 17th, 2009 at 5:15 pm
@Mike:
That’s a good service you’re providing. A lot of lawyers can’t offer that savvy. I rely heavily on a techie buddy of mine, who’s nice and paranoid. Turned me on to a lot of security things when he set up our wireless network. ;)
He taught me a few years ago about folks he knows of who, just for grins, cruise neighborhoods with laptops open to hack into unsecured wireless signals — and into PCs in people’s houses, business, etc. Folks leaving factory default passwords on their routers, stuff like that.
August 17th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
Sorry to sorta hijack the thread. Will stop talking about this now.
Agreed. But there really is a breaking news story this pm about massive identity theft that’s worth a look. :)
August 17th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
The two cloud “killer apps” I’ve heard about are:
1. Interactive gaming (I think there was a recent link to some ex-Apple somebody promoting this), and
2. Remote-storage-based video recorders (basically a TiVo without a local disk). I think this one is ALREADY being fought over in the courts.
Just two more ways for my neighbors to suck up all of my shared bandwidth.
August 17th, 2009 at 5:23 pm
@Transor Z – the guys cruising the neighborhood looking for wireless are “war driving” or “war walking” (never did bother to find out what war is an acronym of). And, they don’t have to be unsecured — the top ten or so passwords work on 90% of these. Go home and make yours a. unadvertised, and b. “unguessable” password (lots of mixed case, special characters, etc.).
August 17th, 2009 at 5:24 pm
Sigh. “War xxxing” comes from the War Games movie. Should make the Zero Hedge people happy…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wardriving
August 17th, 2009 at 5:41 pm
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2009/08/public-option-versus-coops-the-market-test.html
August 17th, 2009 at 5:45 pm
The UBS tax cheat lineage should be interesting.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/UBS-clients-used-foreign-apf-4174057643.html?x=0
Don’t ya just love bankers, lawyers and those pass through entities.
August 17th, 2009 at 5:47 pm
Bergsten – wow, you’re more of an IT geek than I am ;-)
For those of us living in dense urban areas home wireless has been awesome. I don’t even bother paying for internet at home anymore. I just hope on one of the dozen or so neighbors near me who didn’t bother to lock their WAP’s down or change the default password.
J
August 17th, 2009 at 6:00 pm
Thor,
I can see 15-20 networks from our apartment and a couple are always open. Have only used these once or twice when something happend to our net connection, but never for anything substantive. Too paranoid.
August 17th, 2009 at 6:10 pm
Mike – unless you’re downloading kiddy porn or hacking into the fed I don’t think you have anything to be paranoid about.
August 17th, 2009 at 6:19 pm
“Friday Failures”: coincidental?
“Stimulus Package”: I happen to agree with the majority. And I would like to add that its financing will be detrimental to our economy in the years ahead.
“Consumer Spending”: should remain weak for years as they get their “houses” in order. Unless the USG comes up with a law that says you must spend 20% of your discretionary income (on clothes, going out, electronics, eating out, plays, theaters, bowling, etc..) and verify it with receipts provided to the IRS at tax time.
“Who Knew”: I have stated here several times that the USG and financial institutions have been buying, in one form or fashion, each other’s debt for some time. With all the “favors” they do for one another, it is almost comical to think that anyone would believe that they ARE NOT joined at the hip (PPT).
“On Television”: Based on your “popular” blog and your “award winning book”, I think that you would be a good choice to take CNBC up on their offer. But you wouldn’t want to cohost or be just a regular on the “game” shows. No, I think that you could provide a good half hour of contrarian content on financial subjects. Guests could be: Fleck, Bonner, Kass, Kotok, Mish, Kass, ZH…etc. Here’s the pitch: you could raise CNBC’s numbers by capturing a huge segment of people no longer watching financial programming on TV today because they feel betrayed by “normal” news channels. And their own numbers bear this out. Providing a counterintuitive format on CNBC would also attract new viewers. Diversity is a good thing.
August 17th, 2009 at 6:29 pm
Thor,
The problem is you don’t know what you don’t know. For example, even secure connections, e.g. “https:’//” can be hacked by what’s known as a “man-in-the-middle attack” to read things like banking or other secure online communications. It requires a lot of sophistication to do it seamlessly (don’t know that I could do it), and is extremely unlikely to be going on from another apartment, but I don’t take the chance.
An then there’s microtorrent :)
August 17th, 2009 at 6:39 pm
Pat G:
While Barry’s segment would probably be popular, don’t know that CNBC’s regular sponsors, e.g. Fidelity, which runs a ton of mutual funds, would be too happy.
August 17th, 2009 at 6:43 pm
A few good practices on the PC level for Windows is to never use an admin account expect to get and apply software updates. Use a non admin account for everyday use and never let any other account have admin authority. Also need to disable the guest account and use a dos command to change the password. Even when the guest account is disabled it can be hacked unless the default password is changed.
I don’t even have an anti-virus product and have never been infected.
August 17th, 2009 at 6:48 pm
Economy pushes game show contestants to play for keeps h/t Trader Mark
Game shows help keep desperate folks above water
August 17th, 2009 at 6:56 pm
@ Mike
You’re probably right. Life’s a bitch…
August 17th, 2009 at 7:05 pm
Moss:
I imagine you use XP. Solving this problem is one of the better security features of Vista and Windows 7. Guest account off by default. You can have what’s called an administrator account, but if you try to do anything that requires administrative privileges, like access someone else’s data or change an high level setting, it tells you that it requires the privilege and you have to say ok. Some people find this annoying, but it’s really the only solution, much like having to SU in unix. There were so many complaints about it that MS loosened it up in Win7, but you can change it back, which I advise. You don’t see it often once you have the machine set up. Of course, you can still give people limited accounts.
August 17th, 2009 at 7:32 pm
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/value-line-reduced-equity-allocation-on-monday-am-2009-08-17
October 2000 was last time Value Line was more bearish
“In its Aug. 21 issue, which was emailed to subscribers early Monday, Value Line reduced its recommended equity allocation to the range of 60% to 70%.
This reflects a cautious to outright bearish posture on Value Line’s part, since the firm has never lowered its recommended allocation to below 50%. The last time it was lower than it is now was October 2000.”
August 17th, 2009 at 7:35 pm
Hrmmm, I’m debating on whether or not I should stop following the stock guys here and follow this bird instead.
http://www.dailymarkets.com/stocks/2009/08/09/lesson-from-a-parrot-buy-and-hold-blue-chips/
I’m joking by the way :-)
August 17th, 2009 at 7:40 pm
not sure that cloud computing has much to do with mainframes (unless its running linux or unix i guess) have seen enough about it yet (but i have been in that business for more than 20 years). it like distributed (been there done at least twice. nothing new there either) and centralization (again. nothing new there either) so far it looks like a way to save money on utility bills (lots of servers VS one), usually ends up that one is lots cheaper. and most ID theft isn’t by computer by the old fashioned way. some one at a creditor or dumper diving gets your information (been there, didn’t enjoy that ride either!)
August 17th, 2009 at 7:41 pm
2009 Tech “startups” Award goes to:
http://techdirt.com/articles/20090817/0133175896.shtml
August 17th, 2009 at 7:45 pm
why we need the CFPA http://baselinescenario.com/2009/08/17/a-cfpa-research-brief/
August 17th, 2009 at 8:51 pm
Wonk Watch
We read the smarties so you don’t have to
http://www.thebigmoney.com/blogs/sausage/2009/05/27/wonk-watch?obref=obnetwork
Includes: Barry Ritholtz, CEO of only research firm Fusion IQ
August 17th, 2009 at 10:26 pm
A little serving of reality from Tyler Durden…..
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/q2-2009-corporate-defaults-more-double-2008-total
Q2 2009 Corporate Defaults More Than Double 2008 Total
“…. The second quarter of 2009 set a new record for the number of corporate defaults, with 82 non-financial events of default, consisting of 16 names in media and entertainment, 15 in autos and 15 in natural resources, according to a new report published by S&P. The total amount of defaulted debt was $254 billion, far larger than the $102 billion spread among 69 defaults in all of 2008…”
The new sub-prime…..
Ciao,
Econolicious
August 17th, 2009 at 10:33 pm
CNBC: ‘Anyone Who Owns A Suit Can Come On Television’
I thought that policy had been in effect for years….?