Felix Salmon offers a tongue in cheek solution to the problem of business leaders assuming the Fed will act to prevent recessions: How to fix this? Is it not the job of the Fed to try to minimize the severity of recessions? One alternative approach would be to consider it to be the job of the Fed to minimize the severity of the worst possible recession. What would happen if, for instance, rates were set using a random-number generator? Every…
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
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We got a lot of positive and interesting feedback in response to yesterday’s American Comintern. Below are some selected remarks from readers: American Comintern…it’s also well to remember that honoring debts held by foreign bondholders is an imperative of the imperial project. Were debts of various government sponsored entities to be reneged on, then foreign national funding for American wars and bases would vanish. From your “comintern” post, I can see that we agree on the politics of the…
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
“If anybody thought we had a pure free market system, they should think again.” - Robert Bruner, Dean of The Darden School of Business at The University of Virginia [h/t Top Gun FP] A number of readers have asked us for our take on the Freddie Mac/Fannie Mae bailout, so here it is. In the financial blogosphere, reactions to events are immediate, if often half-baked; in academia, reactions are thoughtful but take months or even years. We figured…
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
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In spite of all the fashionable buying today, our outlook over the next week or so isn’t particularly bullish, and here are some reasons why: Historically, it is really uncommon for the market to move up 2% the morning before a Fed announcement… …and in general, these big Fed rallies tend to end either in boredom or in tears over the following several trading days. Over the past decade, these kinds of flashy rallies have been sustained less than…
Thursday, July 31, 2008
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The big news yesterday was that markets were able to push higher in spite of the rally in oil. Of course, one data point doesn’t prove that equities and oil have decoupled, but this relationship certainly bears watching. Anyway, on our unending quest to help you procrastinate about whatever it is you should be doing, some links: Mish Shedlock offers some evidence that the credit crunch is only worsening: Businesses do not want to lend, consumers do not…
Thursday, May 21, 2009
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