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2008
09/25/2008
No Confidence
Every month, two national surveys of consumer confidence get released to much fanfare. One is conducted by the University of Michigan and originated in the late 1940s (and will be released Friday); the other comes from the Conference Board and began in the late 1960s.
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09/13/2008
It’s A Small World After All
If there is one ubiquitous piece of financial advice, it is this: invest in different markets. Each month, the major private wealth banks in the world publish their recommended allocations.
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09/29/2008
The Echoes Of Crisis
There has never been a week like this!" "There is no playbook!" "The worst financial crisis
since the Great Depression!" These phrases and others of equal hyperbole were repeated any
number of times on Wall Street these past weeks. No doubt the drama has been spectacular.
In the space of ten days, the U.S. government took over two mortgage-bond behemoths,
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and assumed de facto control of one of the world's largest
insurance companies, AIG.
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09/18/2008
Bad Accounting Rules Helped Sink AIG
The decision by the Federal Reserve to loan insurance giant AIG $85 billion in return for as much as 80% ownership of the company is by any measure dramatic. The takeover early last week of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac represented the culmination of years of intermingling of public and private interests. But the AIG move is de facto a government nationalization of an ailing private company, which, if not unprecedented, has rarely happened in the United States. Even if the intervention was imperative, its scope is startling.
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09/12/2008
Bomb, Book and Compass: Joseph Needham and the Great Secrets of China by Simon Winchester
THERE ARE BIG books on large subjects, and there are little books on small subjects. And then there are the eccentric hybrids: books about people who wrote big books on large subjects.
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