Here are a few items to start your week:
• U.S. Stocks Post Biggest Retreat Since 2009 on Economic Concern (Bloomberg)
• Barron’s vs Barron’s? You Don’t Need an Economist to Feel an Ill Wind (Barron’s) but see The Economy Is Slowing, Not Stalling (Barron’s)
• No Autographs, Please: Star Analysts Are Back (Dealbook)
• Audio: Interesting Bill Fleckenstein Interview (King World News)
• Attorney General of N.Y. Is Said to Face Pressure on Bank Foreclosure Deal (NYT) see also Foreclosure Talks Snag on Bank Liability (WSJ)
• Greg Ip: The Republicans’ new voodoo economics? (Washington Post)
• Motorola’s Value Found in 18 Patents (Bloomberg) see also Motorola’s Identity Crisis (NYT)
• Radical overhaul of military retirement eyed (CBS News)
• Hans Litten: The man who annoyed Adolf Hitler (BBC News)
• The best column David Brooks has written: The Question-Driven Life (NYT)
What are you reading?
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via Flowing Data
Category: Financial Press
Please use the comments to demonstrate your own ignorance, unfamiliarity with empirical data and lack of respect for scientific knowledge. Be sure to create straw men and argue against things I have neither said nor implied. If you could repeat previously discredited memes or steer the conversation into irrelevant, off topic discussions, it would be appreciated. Lastly, kindly forgo all civility in your discourse . . . you are, after all, anonymous.
What a complete mess! It’s a shame seeing big corporations action it out like children in a sandbox.
Re: Military Retirement
I was wondering when the cutters would get around to the military – not the contractors and advisors who make the billions, but the people who leave their body parts on battlefields. Look who’s on the Defense Business Board, a bunch of suits who are worried that they might have to pay tax at regular rates some day. I’m sure they aren’t counting on their militariy pensions or VA hospitals. I imagine some of these are the people who decided it would be much cheaper to pay Blackwater huge amounts to do things in Iraq that regular army used to do. And I’m sure none of them benefited from those kings of decisions.
Wall Street Aristocracy Got $1.2 Trillion in Loans from Fed, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-21/wall-street-aristocracy-got-1-2-trillion-in-fed-s-secret-loans.html
Via Bernie Sanders and FT Alphaville, crude positions during the 2007-2008 oil bubble, Rather puts the lie to the assertion that it wasn’t speculators driving the market, but were those whose businesses needed to hedge prices for their fuel supplies. Let’s see: Southwest Airlines 45k contracts total; GS almost 900k.
http://sanders.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/energy-holdings-WTI-Crude-Oil.pdf
Testing sewage to determine level of crystal meth usage in a community
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2011/08/21/something_in_the_water/?page=1
‘MOBILE PATENT SUITS’ is a functional diagram of a patent oligopoly.
Try to compete with any of these actors, even using your own technology, and they will crush you with lawsuits.
Overbroad patents serve to suppress innovation, rather than incentivize it.
Tranzor Z — so now the Drug Warriors want to give your house a piss test? Sickening.
One place they can’t reach: ‘The testing couldn’t extend to rural areas that relied on septic tanks instead of public pipes.’
Naturally a Harvard professor was found to say that ‘You could argue either side’ of the civil liberties issue. These are the value-free Ivy League whores who run our judicial system now.
“They wanted to be released from everything, including original sin,” said a U.S. official
BAC et al. Whatever happened to moral hazard?
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/bob-burnett/38002/why-did-capitalism-fail
I love the Brooks column.
Funny line at the end, “Paul Krugman is off today.” While I like and respect Krugman okay, I’ll take David Brooks (one of the few sane conservatives remaining, apparently) any day.
QEII didn’t work so it’s on to QEIII
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-21/treasuries-price-in-qe3-as-barclays-says-traders-anticipate-500-billion.html
machinehead 1st I Greg0658 patent this now @0925:082211
> sewer robot cameras taking water samples on suspect streets (the whole street should get by an invasion of privacy charge) then when a confirmation is found – take the house to paygo the operation
Here is one of the first looks at what America might be like under a Rick Perry administration.
http://dismalpoliticaleconomist.blogspot.com/2011/08/texas-gov-rick-perrys-path-to_22.html
Were Mr. Perry to win the Presidency he would bring with him Republican control of the Senate, maybe as many as 55 Republicans, and with control of the House and a mandate from the voters the 80 year reign of the New Deal would be over.
machinehead: OTOH, one of the big problems in our economy is short termism and lack of research. There’s no reason to spend a lot of money developing technology if someone, e.g. Google, can just come along and steal it.
Fleckenstein reduced to newslettering?
a smart guy that would be a sad thing.
i noted him along with leuthhold shutting down their short funds in 2009
as end of that game for a while
rt Rktbrkr
heres an email sent to my Bof A mortgage salesman today
“Dear Greg
Thanks for being in touch. I am thinking about refi. But the biggest reason is so I get out from under your B of A loan. As detailed in the attached “you” laid on a bunch of wrong charges. Then threatened me with acceleration and foreclosure July 17. Since the letter, your automated systems have bought for me and charged three more times for the walls insurance I already have. You have typically sent letters afterwards saying never mind, but with the latest you are charging me for time in force?
So let me know when you land somewhere else. I am guessing that will be before too long. Meanwhile could you take me off your marketing list?
Thanks Andrew”
i note bloomberg over weekend w Bof A announcing 20% staff cuts.
while you can imagine the spleen vented by me on these hapless servicers
their ” fixing” things was the only thing holding off my well financed B of A lawsuit
chopping mortgage support staff will ramp up legal losses
surely i cant be the only one but moynihans answer is apparently to cry like a pussy to geithner
doubt he gets legal pass but bailout another thing
maybe geithner goes to B of A as CEO not Citi
Mubarak, Ben Ali, bin Laden, and now the guy that stuck Reagan in the eye by blowing up the Lockerbie jet Gaddaffi…
When are the GOP going to admit that Obama’s Noble and strategy has worked? And they were wrong?
AHodge,
If I remember correctly BofA was adding staff to clean up mort doc mess, the large scale layoffs might mean they’re dumping Countrywide into the gov’s lap with a BK, Countrywide was kept as a separate legal entity. If they’ve been able to shift bad BAC and ML mortgages over to Countrywide then they’ve created a good bank/bad bank solution.
so who funds CTY “assets” uncle sugar?
bad bank needs stupid bondholders/funders of bogus assets, possibly the taxpayer
i think Bof A change mind or were lying on supporting more.. i was hearing they were taking the whole mortgage support operation back to “corporate” and chopping.
i aint shorting their stock here, but i dont think re-org bad bank will fly
unless geithner steps up
but goes eventually to jail
meaning i aint shorting it here this minute, today.
[...] for blogger and I think it speaks well to how the best bloggers approach their craft. Likewise Barry Ritholtz pitched today’s David Brooks article about “the question-driven life.” In [...]
AND
while countrywide maybe held as separate legal entity, i believe BAC took over all their funding?
so bad bank will like i say have to find NEW stupid bondholder to fund? GLWT
The diagram reminds me of the end of the fictional rock group, The Rutles:
“Dirk sued Stig and Nasty, Barry sued Dirk, Nasty sued Stig and Barry, and Stig sued himself accidentally. It was the end of a golden era, and the beginning of another one for lawyers everywhere.”
http://www.rutles.org/rstory2.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/22/us-goldman-blankfein-idUSTRE77L5VK20110822
It is what it is…..
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/08/29/110829fa_fact_toobin?currentPage=all