Rolling Stone lays the entirety of the financial crisis out in easy-to-understand language in an important article from their April 2nd, 2009 issue entitled "The Big Takeover." If nausea develops, sit down, put your head between your knees, and repeat to yourself… Well actually, don't bother because the whole thing is completely boned. Just ( Read more... )

Nate Silver does all the work vis-à-vis the AIG bonus situation and I lamely try to take all the credit by saying, "That's what I've been trying to say all along."

Mother Jones-"Brave New Welfare"

Nearly 1 in 50 Americans, "live well below the poverty line and are neither working nor receiving cash benefits like Social Security disability or TANF." TANF is Temporary Aid to Needy Families, i.e. 'Welfare'. Can we really not afford ten or so billion dollars a year for needy families so that millions of children ( Read more... )

Well, actually much earlier than that, but 2009 is when it's coming home to roost so that's as good a date as any to put on it. The music has stopped at this point and everyone is scrambling for a chair. AIG has insured US$1.6 Trillion dollars in derivatives. Yes, that's One Thousand Six Hundred Billion Dollars. As in more than twice the Paulson ( Read more... )

This is for my "OMG Stockz" peeps.

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/03/the-latest-blue-chip-penny-stocks/

America is on sale for less than it costs to buy a cheeseburger, folks.

Keith Bradsher's article "U.S. debt is losing its appeal in China" from yesterday's International Herald Tribune is… troubling.

via Chaos Manor

Is that the sound a sinking ship makes? Or is it 'gloop'?

Anyway, please don't enjoy this economic link salad while eating, as it may cause indigestion.

'Risk Management-What Lead to the Financial Meltdown' and 'The End of the Financial World as We Know It' from the New York Times are a good start. Comments led me to 'Blowing Up', an absolutely ( Read more... )

I'm not ashamed to admit… I own an officially branded pets.com sock puppet, mainly because of the "Don't tell me how to do my job, Puppet!" tag line popular in my office when the pets.com commercials were still on TV.

Click to view

Pets.com didn't work for many reasons. Not the least of which is that free shipping on 50 lb. bags of dog food just isn't economical ( Read more... )

It has been calculated that the cost of the bailout, in inflation adjusted dollars, will be more than the cost of World War II. In fact it will exceed the cost of the Marshall Plan, Louisiana purchase, moon landings, S&L bailout, Korean War, New Deal, Iraqi invasion (and not, I presume, the occupation), Vietnam War, and NASA combined.

Folks, I ( Read more... )

Until I read "The Real Great Depression" by Scott Reynolds Nelson in The Chronicle of Higher Education, I was only vaguely aware of the Panic of 1873. In fact, this pivotal moment in American history seems woefully under-taught in our schools. All the more so now that events have come full circle and many of the same conditions are present in our ( Read more... )