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Saturday Night Live’s China-U.S. press conference is pure comedy. It captures the Zeitgeist pretty well. The Mrs. Obama part at the end, though, was way over-the-top (and in poor taste if you ask me). Take those comments out and you have a pretty funny skit.
One thing, though. It’s more than $1.3 trillion in American paper that China... Read the whole entry... » - News from around the web: 2009-11-17
- Food insecurity: alternative measure of economic distress skyrockets
- Meredith Whitney: “I haven’t been this bearish in a year”
- Why the FDIC’s Resources are Strong and Insured Deposits are "Absolutely Safe"
- Marc Faber: "I don’t think...
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Below is another great article from John Mauldin via his weekly newsletter.
John Mauldin, Best-Selling author and recognized financial expert, is also editor of the free Thoughts From the Frontline that goes to over 1 million readers each week. For more information on John or his FREE weekly economic letter go to: Read the whole entry... » 
This is a post I just wrote over at Yves Smith’s site Naked Capitalism in response to a reader request. Marshall Auerback has already written a reply as well and I will post this later today.
A reader at Naked Capitalism asked us to respond to a recent article from the Christian Science Monitor asking Does US need a second stimulus to create... Read the whole entry... » 
This comes via Gallup:
The latest Gallup Daily tracking results show 49% of Americans approving of the job Barack Obama is doing as president, putting him below the majority approval level for the first time in his presidency.
Although the current decline below 50% has symbolic significance, most of the recent decline in support for Obama occurred...
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Morgan Stanley’s piece on Treasuries Priced for Perfection…for Now! is pretty bearish. The basic gist is that while the ten-year represents fair value today, because inflation expectations have become unanchored, Morgan Stanley expects the yield to rise from 3.3% to 5.5%. That’s a disaster of 1994 proportions. Obviously, given some of Read the whole entry... » 
Valero Energy has just announced it is shutting down its Delaware City Refinery. This is a major news announcement because refiners should be seen as a canary in the coalmine for end-user demand and Valero is one company in the oil patch which has been loath to cut workers to improve the bottom line. This announcement is an indicator that,... Read the whole entry... » 
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The Mortgage Bankers Association is reporting that nearly one in ten households with mortgages are at least one payment behind. That is a record, my friends. And it certainly means we cannot believe house prices have permanently stabilized.
The New York Times says:
The delinquency figure, and a corresponding rise in the number of those losing...
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I pick up Bill Gross where I left him on Friday. He said in his monthly newsletter that the Fed is going to keep interest rates at zero percent through 2010. But, he is not willing to stick his neck out in a liquidity seeking return kind of way even though this is what reflation is all about. He advises lower risk assets over higher risk ones... Read the whole entry... » 
I have written extensively about how I believe the bank bailouts were the worst of all possible solutions – fixes that perpetuate too big to fail, moral hazard and crony capitalism. That ship has sailed, but the questions still linger – in large part because the fix has not trickled down to common folk to better their lot. Rising... Read the whole entry... » 
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See also Democratic Rep. DeFazio Calls for Geithner and Summers to Be Fired – Yves Smith
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Here’s another interesting piece from Randall Wray, the economics professor from University of Missouri-Kansas City (that same school which employs Bill Black of “The Best Way to Rob a bank is to own one” fame).
Wray has a lot to say most, but not all, of which I found convincing – but that’s a story for another day.
This is what I found... Read the whole entry... » 
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Initial jobless claims for the past week were 505,000, tied with last week for the lowest since January. This brings the 4-week average down to 514,000, the lowest since November of last year and the 11th consecutive week of declines.
Clearly, fewer people are losing their jobs. But, 505,000 is still a large number – one consistent... Read the whole entry... » 
I want to take a break from banking and macro stuff and talk a little bit about technology. I wrote an article about Android a few weeks back. That was a more personal account on why I was switching from a Windows Mobile phone to Android, the latest whiz-bang operating system running mobile phones. (Don’t ask me why I stuck with Windows Mobile for... Read the whole entry... » 
Hat tip Rolfe Winkler.
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After a huge fall off in credit consistent with the fall in nominal GDP, we are seeing credit stabilise at a lower level. Debt to GDP ratios may not be lower, but as GDP is lower, so too is credit in the system. Yet there is a large difference between the haves and the have-nots, largely due to a difference in which banks received government... Read the whole entry... » 
Barack Obama has now come clean about his thinking on why his administration has decided to focus first on reducing the deficit and next on jobs. He fears a double-dip recession will occur if foreigners lose confidence in the U.S. dollar, causing interest rates to spike.
This is nonsense and it demonstrates how much at odds Obama’s... Read the whole entry... » 
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Credit Suisse has a note out urging caution on Citigroup shares due to regulatory hurdles. Their logic bears noting as it can be useful for other U.S.-based banks.
On Monday the CS analysts met with Citi management, who were somewhat cautious. The CS note indicates that regulatory changes in the U.S. are likely to mandate higher capital... Read the whole entry... » 
This excerpt comes from the blog News from 1930 which gives us a day-to-day account of what was being reported in 1930 before the worst of the Great Depression hit.
“The unemployment situation in New York is critical. Unless it is speedily met, we face a winter of hunger and distress for families whose bread-earners are without work and without...
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Is this propaganda? I just received this e-mail from the FDIC’s consumer news with the title above. Personally, I never doubted that unbrokered deposits under $250,000 are safe at U.S. depositary institutions. But, the natural sceptic in me doesn’t like to see someone reaffirm what I thought I already knew.
As bank failures are in the... Read the whole entry... » 
The US Department of Agriculture highlights how the United States in the last decade, despite increased aggregate wealth, slid back significantly in terms of food insecurity as measure of poverty. With everyone now focused on the unemployment situation, it bears noting that even before the downturn in the economy there had been a large surge in... Read the whole entry... »
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