Europe Overnight -- Greece ♦♦ Author: Tim Duy ♦♦ Fed Watch 05/17/2012
Will TPTB extend and pretend some more ... or are we actually going to have some mark to market in real time?
The Coming Housing Finance Train Wreck ♦♦ Author: Yves Smith ♦♦ Naked Capitalism 04/07/2012
The interaction of immovable objects and inexorable forces is seldom pretty. One example is housing finance in the US. If no one blinks, an ugly situation could get even worse.
One the one hand, we have the complete lack of resolve on the part of the officialdom to fix the abuses in the private label securitization market, which prior to the crisis, accounted for 60% of mortgage financing. The weak risk retention rules in Dodd Frank don’t cut it, and the sell side (the major banks) have bee
Three Corporate Myths that Threaten the Wealth of the Nation ♦♦ Author: Yves Smith ♦♦ Naked Capitalism 04/07/2012
The wealth of the American nation depends on the productive power of our major business corporations. In 2008 there were 981 companies in the United States with 10,000 or more employees. Although they were less than two percent of all U.S. firms, they employed 27 percent of the labor force and accounted for 31 percent of all payrolls. Literally millions of smaller businesses depend, directly or indirectly, on the productivity of these big businesses and the disposable incomes of their employees
Jobd Act 2012 a Recipe for Fraud ♦♦ Author: Yves Smith ♦♦ Naked Capitalism 04/07/2012
It is hard to say enough bad things about the Jumpstart Obama’s Bucket Shops act in a short space. I’m in the UK now, and a contact asked me to explain it to him. When I told him of some of the major provisions, he could not believe what he was hearing. He said (correctly) that it was a great boon for conmen and aside from a few companies who were early to raise money under the new law, would make obtaining equity funding more difficult and costly for legitimate operators.
Why increasing infaltion is not likely to increase employment ♦♦ Author: Yves Smith ♦♦ Naked Capitalism 04/07/2012
Yves here. I have a mild quibble with part of the argument below, which is based on a study I find badly constructed. Having lived through the 1970s, I can attest that a certain level of inflation does lead people to spend faster to beat rising prices. But my sense it that effect does not kick in until inflation is perceived to be meaningful, say somewhere over 4-5% a year, and I suspect the effect is backwards looking (ie, consumers base their forecasts not on official projections, but on thei
The Case Against Passion ♦♦ Author: Yves Smith ♦♦ Naked Capitalism 04/02/2012
“Passion” became fashionable in business at around the time other forms of emotional overshoot were hot, like “delighting customers.” While there may have been earlier efforts by Tom Peters and other corporate quacks gurus to infuse staid, supposedly rational business behavior with more pizzaz, the passion fashion seemed to take hold in the dot-com era. And that in a perverse way makes perfect sense.
Spain Follows Greece ♦♦ Author: Macro Man ♦♦ Naked Capitalism 03/30/2012
Back in November last year I posted on my confusion over the jubilation shown by the citizens of Spain as they elected Mariano Rajoy as their new political leader. Mr Rajoy’s strategy during the election campaign was to say very little about what he was actually intending to do to address his country’s financial problems, preferring to simply let the incumbent party fall on its own sword so that he could take the reins. It became obvious soon after the election that, despite his party’s best ef
Mortgage Settlement Institutionalizes Foreclosure Fraud ♦♦ Author: Yves Smith ♦♦ Naked Capitalism 03/30/2012
Yves here. I hope you’ll take the time to read this important post. There has been a great deal of discussion of the many deficiencies of the mortgage settlement, but its biggest has gone pretty much unnoticed. It isn’t just that the settlement gives the banks a close to free pass for past predatory, illegal conduct, but it also has such lax servicing standards and weak enforcement provisions so as to give the banks license to carry on with servicing abuses.
Mortgage Settlement Institutionalizes Foreclosure Fraud ♦♦ Author: Yves Smith ♦♦ Naked Capitalism 03/30/2012
Yves here. I hope you’ll take the time to read this important post. There has been a great deal of discussion of the many deficiencies of the mortgage settlement, but its biggest has gone pretty much unnoticed. It isn’t just that the settlement gives the banks a close to free pass for past predatory, illegal conduct, but it also has such lax servicing standards and weak enforcement provisions so as to give the banks license to carry on with servicing abuses.
Taking bosses for hostage- A negotiating tactic in France ♦♦ Author: Yves Smith ♦♦ Naked Capitalism 03/30/2012
At 2 p.m on Thursday, the final day of the annually required wage negotiations that were going nowhere, Bruno Ferrec, the man in charge of the nine Fnac stores in Paris, and his HR Director were “retained” by 120 of his employees at a conference room at the Hotel Ibis in the rue des Plantes in Paris.
“Mr. Ferrec is in the middle of the room,” said Christian Lecanu, representative of the CGT