Negotiating 101 I don’t play poker (or do international diplomacy), but my day job — selling residential real estate — does involve a fair amount of negotiating. So, I think I can say with some confidence that good negotiators don’t usually announce, “I don’t bluff,” as President Obama reportedly just said about dealing with Iran’s...Read More
Opting for Swedish over Japanese Tired of my rants against Wall Street? Consider this “guest” rant instead, which IMHO is pitch-perfect (minus a few #!%#!, perhaps): After 40 years of pain avoidance, can we just rip off the f**kin’ band-aid already? Enough with the asset price protection, it is the root cause of everything bad about...Read More
Two Scenarios, One Result With the deadline to raise the federal debt ceiling looming, one of two outcomes appears likely: One. “The band-aid” solution (also known as “kicking the can down the road”). Under this scenario, Congress and President Obama reach some cosmetic, convoluted compromise that essentially buys (more) time. Two. The two parties’ philosophical differences...Read More
Two Types of Housing Distress The key to understanding [the administration’s housing] plan will be remembering that there are two different groups of homeowners who are at risk of foreclosure. The first group is made up of people who cannot afford their mortgages and have fallen behind on their monthly payments . . . The...Read More
George Bush’s Role inToday’s Economic Car Crash Everyday Americans — if not historians — are likely to remember George W. Bush as the President who crashed the family car (the economy). However, it would be too easy to simply lay it all on #43 and move on (or try to — right now we’re all...Read More
The Financial Crisis So Far The country — and world’s — biggest financial crisis since the 1930’s has reopened a long dormant debate regarding 1930’s economic policy. Democrats today subscribe to the notion that FDR did too little during The Great Depression, unnecessarily prolonging it. Had he used even more fiscal stimulus (public works, capital...Read More
