Blogs

Since October 2008 I’ve been writing here about problems in mortgage backed securities (MBS). There is more evidence surfacing in bankruptcy courts that the paperwork for the underlying mortgages wasn’t provided correctly for the new bond holders, leading to delayed or denied foreclosure proceedings.  read more »

How far can the totals go? Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke testified before the Senate Budget Committee on March 3, 2009. He believes that the markets will be “quite able” to absorb the debt issued by the US government over the next couple of years to cover all the bailout and stimulus payments  read more »

Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoë has spent much of his first term in implementing measures to restrict car use. Delanoë took many lanes of road traffic away from cars and turned them into exclusive bus and taxi lanes. This had virtually no effect on public transport use, according to University of Paris researchers who also found as a result that traffic congestion worsened, greenhouse gas emissions increased and overall cost to the Paris economy of more than $1 billion annually.  read more »

From late-night refrigerator raids to splurging on a new wardrobe, everyone is prone to the occasional overindulgence. For San Francisco Mayor, Gavin Newsom, that overindulgence meant nothing more than a plastic water bottle.

In June 2007, the mayor “issued an executive order directing city government to no longer purchase bottled water,” to cut down on waste in the city landfill and to utilize the pristine Sierra Nevada reservoir’s resources.  read more »

Looking for a safe haven for your banking investments? The Royal Bank of Canada is about three times the size of Citigroup, Royal Bank of Scotland or Deutsche Bank – and they haven’t cut their dividend in more than 70 years. Although Canadian banking profits declined double-digits last year, they actually had profits. Pretty much the rest of the world’s banks are reporting massive losses.  read more »

For some time it has been assumed that reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions will require a shift to cars that do not use petroleum and to power plants that do not use coal, because of the emissions from these sources. All of this may be a false alarm.  read more »

Banks in Connecticut, once interested in accepting funds from the Trouble Asset Relief Program, are now “questioning whether it’s worth participating in the program.”

Concerns over the undefined terms and changing conditions imposed on those accessing TARP money has made the banks uneasy about such long-term commitments.  read more »

Don’t worry about China taking over the US economy. Despite what all the talking heads on TV and the radio talk shows are saying, there isn’t another country out there that hasn’t been hammered at least as badly as we have by the financial meltdown. The problem with any other country attacking the US dollar, for example, is that they are all holding a lot of US dollars. You probably remember last year they were worried about the fact that we import so many goods that we have big “trade imbalances” – meaning that we buy more of their goods than they buy of ours.  read more »

S&P released the December Case-Shiller Housing Price Index data this morning: no market has been spared from the free fall. Steep price declines continue in ultra-bubble regions Las Vegas, Miami, San Diego, Phoenix, and Las Vegas. Even the relatively healthy markets of Charlotte, Dallas, and Atlanta have been sliding since mid-2008. Here's the line chart:  read more »

In the ten-year stretch from Sept. 1929 to Sept. 1939, spanning the worst years of the Great Depression, the stock market dropped a full 50%, adjusted for inflation. Look out, the current decade (Feb. 17, 1999 to Feb. 17, 2009) appears to yield the same decrease: the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index is down roughly 50%, also adjusted for inflation.  read more »