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I have a friend who is a very unusual and cosmopolitan blend. Satoshi is a Japanese guy who grew up in the deep south in New Orleans who I met when we worked together at a German bank in the high yield market in London ten years ago.
He has this expression he always used [...]

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At the end of last week, the warning came. The Chinese officially warned Hank Paulson et al. that they better get their act together on Fannie and Freddie. The Chinese own a ton of GSE paper and they would be hopping mad to see their investments lose value.
The implicit threat is that the Chinese [...]

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On Friday, Bloomberg quoted a former LTCM partner as saying the $1.9 trillion hedge fund industry faces “much worse” conditions than in 1998, when Long-Term Capital Management LP collapsed.

“It’s definitely a trickier environment. The market is much worse that it was in 1998. Then it was just LTCM, but this impacts everybody.”
-Hans Hufschmid, former partner [...]

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The number of Americans who have seen their full-time jobs chopped to part time because of weak business has swelled to more than 3.7 million — the largest figure since the government began tracking such data more than half a century ago.-NY Times, A Hidden Toll on Employment: Cut to Part Time, [...]

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“I am officially scared. In 2000, we had a technology bubble. But this is massive, a massive credit crisis and a bubble in global housing, global equity and global land.”
-Jeremy Grantham as quoted by Chicago Tribune

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Talking about the financial markets and the housing mess, George W. Bush offered up these pearls of wisdom:

“There is no question about it. Wall Street got drunk…. That’s one reason I asked you to turn off your TV cameras….[Wall Street] got drunk and now it’s got a hangover……The question is, how long will it [take [...]

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Have we, too, not suffered at the hands of what used to be called The Interests? Have the stewards of other people’s money not made a hash of high finance? Did they not enrich themselves in boom times, only to pass the cup to us, the taxpayers, in the bust? Where is [...]

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“The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to [...]

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In her column at Bloomberg News, Baum had this to say about the financial bailout solutions proposed by the U.S. government.
How do we know the market failed if we don’t allow it to work? Capitalism without failure is like religion without sin…… And no, none of [the bailout proposals] are solutions for a [...]

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In his prepared remarks at the Senate Banking Committee, Jim Bunning had a classic line.
When I picked up my newspaper yesterday, I thought I woke up in France. But no, it turns out socialism is alive and well in America.-Bunning Senate Website, 15 Jul 2008
France is always a good target in the US.