Finance
« Previous EntriesAnd you thought things were bad here…
Wednesday, November 19th, 2008Check this story out from the LA Times: Colombia declares emergency over investment scams
From the piece:
Colombian government officials declared a state of emergency Monday, boosting their powers of arrest and money seizure, to help deal with multimillion-dollar investment scams that have targeted mostly poor investors.
I mean, wow. Rioting and a state of emergency? Just think [...]
Greenspan “Admits some mistakes”
Thursday, October 23rd, 2008Understatement of the year, from an article over the WSJ:
Grilled by lawmakers examining the causes of the financial crisis, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan on Thursday admitted some mistakes in assumptions about deregulation while rejecting the idea that he is personally responsible for what he termed a “once-in-a-century credit tsunami.”
Hm, so it must have [...]
Iceland and Thomas Friedman
Sunday, October 19th, 2008New York Times Op-Ed columnist Thomas Friedman uses his latest op-ed to connect the tragedy of Iceland’s banking system with his theories on the flat world, and hits the nail perfectly on the head. As he begins:
If you’re looking for a single example of how the globalization of finance helped get us into this mess [...]
Bear Sterns Fund Managers Indicted
Thursday, June 19th, 2008As reported by just about every media outlet under the sun, two high profile executives from now disgraces brokerage house Bear Sterns, Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin, have been indicted on federal securities fraud charges. The two of them were running two hedge funds for Bear Sterns which completely collapsed. What exactly did they do [...]
Who are the central bankers working for?
Tuesday, March 25th, 2008Big central banks such as the Federal Reserve Bank or the European Central Bank are supposed to be looking out for the interests of the people, working to stave of financial disaster. At least, that is what common wisdom holds. Unfortunately, recent monetary moves by the Fed seem to show otherwise. Unless you’ve been living [...]
You CAN make money on renewable energy
Wednesday, February 20th, 2008Reuters news service is reporting that “Investors pledge $10 billion for renewable energy“, stating:
U.S. institutional investors pledged at a U.N. summit on Thursday to invest $10 billion over two years in technologies that aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to pressure companies to disclose their risks associated with climate change.
This is a big [...]
Bush has a plan to fix subprime debacle
Thursday, December 6th, 2007Today President Bush unveiled a plan to try and make better the disaster that is known as the sub-prime mortgage market. Of course, we could immediately classify this into the “too little, too late” department, but let’s analyze some of his comments. First off, we have
the Bush administration hopes that it can help more [...]
Interest Rate… Cut!!
Saturday, September 22nd, 2007So the big news this week is the 50 basis points interest rate cut in the federal fund rate. The federal fund rate is essentially what banks charge each other to borrow money on overnight, short term loans. The lower the rate is, the cheaper it is to borrow money and the more liquidity is [...]
A Bank Run in England
Monday, September 17th, 2007The Northern Rock bank in England has an uncertain (to say the least) future on the horizon. As reported by multiple news outlets, bank customers have been waiting in excess of two hours to withdraw savings from the bank. As one of the articles explained:
Northern Rock is Britain’s fifth biggest mortgage lender, but customers [...]
The End of Uninterrupted Job Growth
Friday, September 7th, 2007First off, welcome to September. I’m back from my vacation, and I’m slowly but surely getting back into the swing of things.
Second, we all knew this day had to come eventually. The labor department released the new jobs figures for August, and lo and behold, employers eliminated 4,000 jobs in August. The New York [...]