Wall Street Oxymoron: “Spin-Free Financial Journalism” “What happens when you turn over regulatory responsibilities to people who think there is really no need for regulation?” –Floyd Norris, “When Regulators are Blind to Rules“; The NYT (12/18/2014) I can count on one hand — with a finger or two left over — the financial journalists and...Read More
Lies, Damn Lies, and Housing Predictions “Government statistics are often questionable and sometimes turn out to have been highly misleading. Unfortunately for policy makers, such errors are most likely to be severe at precisely the time that the economy is turning around.” –Floyd Norris, “Doubting the Economic Data? Consider the Source”; The NYT (11/6/2014) “It’s...Read More
When Supply & Demand (Especially “Supply”) are Broken “The sale of a home actually represents two, discrete transactions. To a Seller, it represents a lump-sum payoff; to a Buyer, it represents a series of monthly payments.” –Floyd Norris; The New York Times To explain the dearth of homes for sale nationally as well as locally...Read More
“Lurching From Port to Starboard” My favorite quotes assessing yesterday’s market action follow. (Note: ‘HFT’ stands for “High Frequency Trading”; “fat finger” refers to the rumor circulating that someone at Citigroup mistakenly entered a trade with “billion” instead of “million” entered.) Personally, I find it hard to believe that a clerical error could be the...Read More
Oops, They Did it Again! If we’re not going to shut down rogue investment banks like Goldman Sachs, or break them up into smaller, less economy-threatening pieces, how about at least requiring that they give their clients (hard to believe they still have any) the equivalent of a financial “Miranda warning.” Something like this perhaps:...Read More
Thirty Years in a Home — And No Equity It used to be that people who had owned homes for a longer time were less leveraged than recent purchasers, but the refinancing boom changed that. “A coordinated increase in leverage among homeowners during good times will lead to sharply higher correlations in defaults among those...Read More
