From the category archives:

Economics

Ben Bernanke on 60 Minutes

March 15, 2009 by Ryan Barr

A very, very interesting interview with Ben Bernanke. If you have any desire to understand how things work, this is a very simple must watch.

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Freddie Mac reports another fantastic quarter in a great year (sarcasm dripping)

March 11, 2009 by Ryan Barr

Freddie Mac reports $50 billion in loses for 2008, and then asks for another $30 billion in federal funding. Guess what, we are going to throw some more good money after the bad.

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Not making a single payment… You’re kidding me, right?

March 9, 2009 by Ryan Barr

The Washington Post recently had an article about FHA loans without a single payment made. In fact, these type of “Quick Default” loans are a growing part of the FHA portfolio. My comments on the article and how broken this whole thing is. Warning, it is a bit of a political rant. The whole situation makes me sick.

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Mark to Market Rules

March 7, 2009 by Ryan Barr

Rumor is building that the government is talking about the suspension of Mark to Market accounting. What a great idea, let’s all pretend that our worthless garbage is worth something! You’ve got to be kidding me… My commentary on this whole mess, and a fantastic Ziggy Cartoon!

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Headline Unemployment Rate – 8.1%

March 6, 2009 by Ryan Barr

Okay the payroll data came out, and it was down an additional 651,000.  The unemployment rate jumped to 8.1% and we’ve dropped about 4.4MM jobs since 12/07.  The job losses are spreading throughout the economy and the breadth is fairly staggering.

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More haphazard bailouts…

February 26, 2009 by Ryan Barr

From the WSJ – Citigroup Inc. and the U.S. are close to an agreement in which the government will substantially increase its stake in the bank and will demand boardroom changes in return, according to people familiar with the matter. The deal, expected to be announced Friday morning, is designed to ease jitters about the [...]

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So President Obama signed the Stimulus package into law today…

February 17, 2009 by Ryan Barr

And this is the quote from the WSJ.com news alert I get: “I don’t want to pretend that today marks the end of our economic problems. Nor does it constitute all of what we have to do to turn our economy around. But today does mark the beginning of the end,” the president said. You’ve [...]

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The real solution, Inflation

February 15, 2009 by Ryan Barr

Paul Krugman makes an interesting observation: …the role of WWII in cleaning up private-sector balance sheets. During the war years there was very little private borrowing, thanks at least in part to wartime restrictions; meanwhile there was both strong economic growth and a lot of inflation. The result by the war’s end was a very [...]

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Too Funny!

February 13, 2009 by Ryan Barr

Barry Ritholtz cracks me up.  This is an article he posted on his blog, The Big Picture, today: Sometime this year, taxpayers will receive an Economic Stimulus Payment. This is a very exciting new program that I will explain using the Q and A format: Q. What is an Economic Stimulus Payment? A. It is [...]

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Fixing the Mortgage Mess

February 9, 2009 by Ryan Barr

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you are very well aware of the Mortgage mess that we as a nation are in.  There have been many interesting solutions proposed to fix the problem, however I think they are all missing the mark. To fix the problem you have to fix what is broken today, [...]

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