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It was riotous, side-splitting comedy last week when Sanford Weill, the onetime head of Citibank, went on CNBC to announce that he thought it was time to break up the big banks.
Why this was funny: Through his ambitious (and at the time not yet legal) decision to merge Citibank, Travelers, and Salomon Brothers into one giant wrecking ball of greed, self-dealing and global irresponsibility called Citigroup, Weill more or less single-handedly created the Too-Big-To-Fail problem. You know, the one currently casting that thick, black doomlike shadow over all humanity which, if you look out
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Matching the Fed’s actions yesterday, the ECB’s Mario Draghi has just stated in his press conference that the ECB ‘may’ act in the coming weeks. Translation: Draghi doesn’t have the power to print anything without Germany, and Mr. Market is not happy. Gold and silver sold off hard on the news/COMEX open, with silver seeing Read the Rest...
Read more: Silver Doctors
The shrinking vacancy rate indicates that the so-called shadow inventory, which includes homes facing foreclosure or repossessed by banks that aren't listed for sale, is smaller than the biggest estimates and less of a threat to a real estate recovery, Kolko said. The shadow inventory was 5.95 million homes last month, down from a high of 8.79 million in early 2010, Morgan Stanley said in a July 26 report.
Read more: Implode-Explode Heavy Industries news feed
``Both the equity and the credit markets are betting on US housing recovery... chart from JPMorgan shows the YTD total return for the sectors in the JPMorgan High Yield (bond) Index. The housing sector has outperformed the overall index by almost 8%.''
Read more: Implode-Explode Heavy Industries news feed
``... as soon as he explained that his plan to promise a plan which plans to promise a solution was nothing but another promise and not an actual plan, so everything reversed. S&P futures are -17pts from pre-Draghi, Gold back under $1600, and the USD is ripping higher, Treasury yields are down 8bps from pre-Draghi, EURUSD is down 50pip sfpom, pre-Draghi after trading up over 1.24 as he began, and has retraced over 75% of the post-Draghi 'believe' speech. Spain and Italy have given back the immediate euphoria with Italy now 50bps wider from pre-Draghi and Spain +25bps (having retraced
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FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Giving Europe's permanent ESM rescue fund a banking license and thereby allowing it to tap the European Central Bank for funding is against European law, ECB President Mario Draghi said on Thursday.
Read more: Reuters: Top News
TORONTO (Reuters) - Research In Motion chose its home country to launch a PlayBook tablet with built-in support for cellular networks, a crucial feature that its initial models lacked.
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The number of Americans filing new claims for jobless benefits rose less than expected last week, but the data continues to be influenced by distortions from seasonal auto shutdowns.
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Be back soon.
Read more: The Big Picture
There's something about disruption that stirs up a certain amount of animosity in those on the receiving end. It sometime seems to be almost a "fight-or-flight" response, brought on by those whose "sure thing" has become about as fiscally wise as "buying a home" or "selling the farm to buy Facebook shares."
E-book mystery writer Stephen Leather got to experience this phenomenon in person while visiting the three-day Harrogate Crime Writing Festival, with the dual purpose of rubbing elbows with
Read more: Techdirt.
[UPDATE: Some comments (namely Steve Mosby's and David Hewson's) have pointed out that there is more to this story than simply the post by Stephen Leather I used as the basis for this one. While other accounts of this event differ slightly, the overview remains pretty much the same. However, there is a glaring omission from Leather's post that is mentioned in others. David Hewson's take on the event, as well as Mosby's, mention that Leather admitted to using sock puppets to
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NEW YORK (Reuters) - Trading firm Knight Capital is being forced to raise money after an erroneous trading position wiped out $440 million of the firm's capital, Knight said in a statement on Thursday.
Read more: Reuters: Top News
KABUL (Reuters) - Afghan security forces killed five insurgents and wounded one during a pre-dawn raid in Kabul on Thursday, with authorities saying they had thwarted a mass attack and captured intelligence pointing to the militant Haqqani network.
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Draghi is explicitly calling on governments to “stand ready to activate the EFSF.” In order for the EFSF to start buying bonds of individual countries, these nations must make a request for help. He said the ECB ‘may undertake outright open market operations’ and ‘may take further non standard measures.’ He gave no hint’s though [...]
Read more: The Big Picture
Republican Gov. Rick Snyder plans to use about $10 million of Michigan's $97 million payout from a national mortgage-settlement fund to help demolish abandoned houses that surround nine schools in three of Detroit's deteriorating communities. At the same time, social workers will relocate from their offices into schools in an effort to reduce truancy and establish the buildings as neighborhood hubs....The governor's plan is modeled after a program in Grand Rapids, the state's second-largest city, that helped reduce truancy and stabilize neighborhoods there, according to Maura D. Corrigan,
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This time around -- insofar as it's possible to piece together what happened -- it seems as if the computers ran amok, sticking Knight not only with damage to its reputation on Wall Street but with a loss that some have estimated could be as high as $300 million. ...
It's not that they mind the computerized trading, the human traders insist. It's just that the two systems, human and cyber, don't have to play by the same rules. "If a human being tried to do what these systems routinely do -- test the market to see how people will respond by submitting orders and then pulling them back in
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Click to enlarge: Source:New Math
Read more: The Big Picture
An entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us...
Read more: Anonymous
You really don’t think anti-piracy laws are about power to censor? (Not protecting artists)
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