They Aren't Really This Stupid, Are They?
I've been slack-jawed a couple of times during this debacle of an economic mess, but this has to take the cake: Here is the real stunner. A senior person at Treasury said to a small group of us that it is now official Treasury policy to extend and pretend on real estate loans. In other words, the policy statement from last week says, if you can make an analysis that says even if the current value is less than the loan, if you can do a spreadsheet that shows if you extend for 3-5 years, and if the economy gets better, and if the loan can be amortized down to where

"Black Friday" Reports Trickling In
This jives with what I posted over on Tickerforum: Preliminary sales data show shoppers spent $10.66 billion when they hit the malls on the day after Thanksgiving. That's only 0.5 percent more than last year. The figures were compiled by ShopperTrak RCT Corp., a Chicago research firm that tracks sales at more than 50,000 stores. Remember 2007? ShopperTrak did th

The Black Hats Strike Back (Bernanke)
It appears that Ben Bernanke has his knickers in a bit of a bind this morning.... For many Americans, the financial crisis, and the recession it spawned, have been devastating -- jobs, homes, savings lost. Understandably, many people are calling for change. Yet change needs to be about creating a system that works better, not just differently. As a nation, our challenge is to design a system of financial oversight that will embody the lessons of the past two years and provide a robust framework for preventing future crises and the economi

China And The Environment: Go Blow Yourself
Their claims of "carbon reduction" are simple lies: BEIJING (Reuters) - A top Chinese climate envoy said Friday only emissions curbs carried out under its newly announced carbon intensity targets that have international financial support will be open to outside scrutiny. In other words they will lie.  Just as they do about virtually everything else. Yu Qingtai, China's climate change ambassador, added that most of the country's emissions-curbing plans would

A Sober Reminder On Black Friday
Dubai, being one of the "birthplaces" of an entire category of investment known as "Islamic Bonds", was considered a "new dawn" for finance. Wednesday evening into today shows four things in stark relief: "Islamic Finance" is no more of a revolution than is "Western Finance."  Indeed, the entire premise of "Islamic Finance" is nothing more than a dodge around a religious stricture of lending at interest.  It is still lending at interest, no matter what sort of dodge someone puts into the agreement to make it comport with some claimed religious stricture.