“Auction Today”? Not Exactly I spent a good chunk of today’s broker tour going through a 90 unit condo project in St. Louis Park. (If you didn’t know, Realtors spend a part of each Tuesday looking at all the new properties on the market, in a ritual called “Broker Tour.”) The condo complex caught my...Read More
Who are Obama’s Air Traffic Controllers? One of the things I remember about the beginning of the Reagan administration — yes, I’m old enough to remember very well — was the abrupt change in tone from the Carter administration. Suddenly, the country’s leadership seemed capable of saying “no.” One of the first important constituencies to...Read More
Wall Street Who-Dunnit: No One?? Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan. –John F. Kennedy Hurricane Katrina was an act of nature. The economy’s Wall Street-triggered financial collapse is not. If and when anyone is actually held accountable for that, you can expect to hear variants (combinations?) of the following defenses. (Im)plausible...Read More
“Houston, We Have a (Political) Problem”One of the very best pieces I’ve read — out of perhaps thousands now — analyzing the ongoing financial melt-down is “The Quiet Coup,” by Simon Johnson. The article appears in the May issue of The Atlantic magazine. Johnson, a former chief economist of The International Monetary Fund, has a...Read More
The Market Bottoms . . in Fern Hill The first hint of a bottom came around Thanksgiving, when this non-descript rambler in St. Louis Park’s Fern Hill neighborhood came on the market for $189,900. What happened next could only be described as a feeding frenzy: 17 offers in less than 72 hours, with the winning...Read More
What’s Good for Goldman Sachs To love Geithner’s plan, you have to embrace his philosophy that what’s good for Wall Street is good for America. –Margaret Carlson, “Geithner Deals Wall Street a Can’t-Lose Hand“; Bloomberg (3/26/09)What’s good for the country is good for General Motors, and what’ s good for General Motors is good for...Read More
