Monthly Archives: February 2007

Freddy Mac’s official statistics notwithstanding, HSBC is facing heavy weather in its US subprime operations: The impact of slowing house price growth is being reflected in accelerated delinquency trends across the US sub-prime mortgage market, particularly in the more recent … Continue reading →

Mike Shedlock (Mish) is convinced that mortgage delinquencies are rising, despite finding this chart in a recent Freddie Mac report: That’s Mish circling the footnote: he’s convinced that the explanation for the drop can be found in the footnotes. Essentially … Continue reading →

Robert Shiller has been predicting a housing-market crash for as long as anybody, which is why his piece in the Wall Street Journal today is so interesting: it seems he’s not predicting a crash any more! Here’s the final paragraph … Continue reading →

Dean Baker has been worrying for a while about US productivity. Could it be that he needn’t have worried? U.S. productivity up sharply in 4th quarter The productivity of U.S. workers rose sharply in the fourth quarter and labor cost … Continue reading →

Yesterday I mentioned that Lehman Brothers had released a 145-page research note on climate change. In response, a friendly reader sent me a similar report from Citigroup (120 pages, dated January 19), and said that UBS might have one out … Continue reading →

Larry Summers doesn’t trust the judgment of the market, and thinks the government should step in to intervene – by throwing money into R&D related to the life sciences: In today’s economy, an outstanding graduate of a leading business school … Continue reading →

Matthew Tubin comments, apropos the large increase in bilateral overseas development assistance to Africa under the Bush Administration: Given the geostrategic competition that is emerging over oil (Nigeria, Chad and even the Sudan) and influence in Africa between the United … Continue reading →

Indonesia has signed a memorandum of understanding with Baxter Healthcare, whereby Baxter will pay Indonesia for samples of the avian flu virus. At the same time, Indonesia has stopped sending samples of the virus to the WHO. Baxter Healthcare says … Continue reading →

Todd Moss: Under President George W. Bush U.S. assistance to Africa has sharply increased, reaching $4.2 billion in 2005, nearly four times the level of 2000, and more than twice the level of any previous administration. Here’s the chart: (Via … Continue reading →

Thomas Palley has a blog entry today entitled "In Defense Of Sarbox". If only it were. In fact, it’s more of an argument against anti-Sarbox arguments, some of which – Palley is right – are pretty weak. On the other … Continue reading →

Lehman Brothers has released a 145-page report (out of its London office, natch) entitled "The Business of Climate Change". It’s a very solid book, with excellent analysis of the facts as we know them, the prospects for how climate change … Continue reading →

Is economic stability always a good thing? Well, yes, of course it is. But look at what’s happened to Kenya over the past few years, which have seen what JP Morgan, in a recent research note (yes! a research note … Continue reading →

One of the most compelling parts of the Bloomberg-Schumer report was the way in which it praised London’s principles-based approach to financial-sector regulation over New York’s rules-based approach: "our regulatory framework is a thicket of complicated rules, rather than a … Continue reading →

A few commenters have said that they like the recondite stuff, so I did quite enjoy, earlier today, throwing out a blog post talking about the CFTC and the CDS market and hazard rates without bothering to spell everything out. … Continue reading →

Jean Rogers waxes Wittgensteinian: Arabic, for example, can convey business, merchant, etc., in a word, but it takes a lengthy explanation to capture ‘entrepreneur’. After the recent success in working with Ministries and linguistic experts to invent an Arabic word … Continue reading →

Sara Welch of the NYT has been talking to the State Department about the difficulty of getting visas to enter the US: Changes added after Sept. 11, 2001 “came so quickly that we weren’t as efficient as we wanted to … Continue reading →

Alea, who broke the news that the CFTC’s proposed CDS futures were being tranformed into bankruptcy futures, has a provocative post up saying that this is actually a good thing. The CFTC was right to restrict the credit event to … Continue reading →

Richard Behar of Fox News has quite the scoop today: minutes of a World Bank board meeting (actually a Washington meeting of the board’s budget and “development-effectiveness” committees) seem to show a wholly dysfunctional relationship between the Bank’s board and … Continue reading →

One of the weirdest puzzles of the Great Moderation is that equity-market volatility has been going down, even as leverage has been going up. Ceteris paribus, of course, if you increase the amount of leverage in a company or a … Continue reading →

Are you still reading the EIU report on Ecuador from last Friday? Silly. Don’t believe for a second that anything in Ecuador can remain germane through a whole weekend. (For what it’s worth, the EIU has Ecuador on a CCC … Continue reading →

11:15am: OK, that’s it for the sovereign material, I’m done for the morning. Ed Parker threw away a comment as he was finishing up, saying that a US or Israeli bombing of Iran in 2007 would of course be bad … Continue reading →

William Hutchings of Financial News had a big piece on Friday examining the performance of the most expensive hedge funds: places which blow away the standard 2-and-20 structure with structures like Citadel’s 8.75-and-20, GAM/Caxton’s 4.5-and-30, or SAC’s eye-popping 0-and-50. Hutchings … Continue reading →

There seems to be some appetite for the recondite stuff here – so let me draw your attention to a press release with the scintillating title of "Belize 2015 Notes Amended". The ostensible subject of the press release is that … Continue reading →