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Obama to tap Yellen for Fed vice chair:source| Reuters
BBC News – Rove ‘proud’ of US waterboarding terror suspects
Walmart vende la Barbie negra a mitad de precio que la blanca ¿discriminación? – elConfidencial.com
Examiner sees gimmicks in Lehman demise| Reuters
FDIC: Failed Bank Information – Bank Closing Information for LibertyPointe Bank, New York, NY
Americans’ [...]

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About a month ago I wrote a post called “The coming wave of second mortgage writedowns” the gist of which was that the big four banks (Citi, JP, BofA, and Wells) had a shed load of exposure to now worthless second mortgages. With many first mortgages now hopelessly underwater, it stands to reason that second [...]

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This is the fifth in a series of posts about ideas for financial reform generated by the “Make Markets Be Markets” conference I attended yesterday in New York City on 3 Mar 2010. You can download all of the written presentations here.
Let’s talk about regulatory capture and financial reform for a [...]

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When former Morgan Stanley chief Asian economist Andy Xie comments on the United States, he focuses on a bailout nation keen on perpetuating a bubble economy predicated on malinvestment and overconsumption.  In this he sees parallels with Japan and its long malaise.
Japan has experienced two decades of economic stagnation since the collapse of the infamous [...]

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The following is a post by Marshall Auerback, who also writes at New Deal 2.0.
We’ve persistently taken the view that there is no economic doctrine, no magic number, which would imply a firm external constraint as far as public spending goes, when dealing with a sovereign government issuing debt in its own floating rate, non-convertible [...]

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Below is a partial list of January 2010 FDIC enforcement decisions and orders. I have only included cease-and-desist orders, prompt corrective action notices and termination of insurance orders as these are the signs of banking system distress.
FINAL ORDERS ISSUED PURSUANT TO SECTION 8(b), 12 U.S.C. § 1818(b) Cease-and-Desist
Peoples Independent Bank, Boaz, AL; [...]

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I am back from a week in Mexico.  And here in DC there are still mountains of snow on the ground. Here are some links I picked up on yesterday on my way home.
Cheers.
Edward
PS. – the article from Worthwhile Canadian Initiative is another disappointing one.  I told you on Thursday that the fallacies of composition [...]

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Yves Smith and I received a tip at the weekend from a friend who reads the German press regularly about credit default swaps (CDS) on Greek government debt. Read Yves’ piece based on that article here. Below is mine.
Previously, I had mentioned the CDS exposure of the hapless German Landesbanks (banks owned by the individual [...]

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In the lead-up to the credit crisis, I really didn’t write a considerable amount about second mortgages despite my focus on credit writedowns. At that time, I was more focused on writedowns from securitized mortgage paper (and later construction loans and commercial real estate because of the stress these loan types put on regional financials). [...]

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John Mauldin’s latest is about spotting asset bubbles and the potential government policy response. But he also has a lot to say about the latest employment situation survey and the situation in Greece with an apt comparison to the U.S.
In this issue: A Bubble in Search of a Pin [...]