The White House said Friday that U.S. President Barack Obama, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and South African President Jacob Zuma reached a "meaningful agreement" for combating climate change. The deal was described by an administration official as "not sufficient to combat the threat of climate [...]
Some interesting items that caught my eye today:
• Agencies in a Brawl for Control Over Banks (WSJ)
• Accounting rule impact delayed (The Hill)
• Apparently, I am a Sith Lord (Business Insider)
• Harvard’s Feldstein Says U.S. Economy Still Mired in Recession (Bloomberg)
• Best of the Year:
-BOSTONIAN OF [...]
Against the handwriting Nazis — Miller-McCune
You think that walking away is a Bad Thing? Tell that to Morgan Stanley! — Ritholtz
Facebook issues a statement about the Overstock/Deep Capture sockpuppetry — Weiss
Krugman teams up with DeLong against Bernanke on inflation targets — NYT
The WSJ tries to charge [...]
The WSJ adds color to the story of Citigroup's flop of a stock offering on Wednesday. Citi, it seems, is deciding to blame the government, which allowed Wells Fargo to do its own TARP-exit stock offering at the same time. Treasury, of course, is having none of it:
Treasury [...]
It’s crunch time in Copenhagen. The conference appears to be in deadlock just as world leaders are arriving to sort out the final details—little progress has been made on any of the substantive issues, in the WSJ. The climate conference risks descending into “farce,” says U.K. climate minister [...]
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said today in Copenhagen that the U.S. would help raise $100 billion a year by 2020 to help finance the fight against climate change in poor countries, the WSJ reports.
via blogs.wsj.com
[...]Tyler Cowen on whether we should read great thinkers or their distillers. I agree, but: Kripke on Wittgenstein — MR
Wamu asks to probe Fed over collapse — Reuters
Wherein the WSJ describes interest-rate expectations as “an epic fail” — WSJ
“The Intersection of Christianity and Journalism” would seem to [...]
The problems of getting an artist's visa to travel in the US — WSJ
McArdle says homeowners should pay non-recourse loans even if it doesn't make financial sense to do so — Atlantic
Ozimek's latest on homes-as-investments — Modeled Behavior
Fraudulent Italian wine — Decanter
Daniel Lippman is a star.' [...]
"It's not fair," Mr. He** said. "Whoever created this problem, they're responsible," he said. Although he said the European Union had largely lived up to its emission-reduction promises, he singled out the U.S. several times by name as a country that hadn't done its share.
via online.wsj.com
Simple economics says the [...]
The Copenhagen climate summit is in disarray after developing nations walked out of the conference early Monday, reports BBC. At issue: Whether Copenhagen will ditch the old Kyoto Protocol. That means the climate confab is temporarily suspended.
A walkout by poor countries was always an option, The Guardian notes, [...]
Mr. Volcker has become quite vocal lately. Be sure to check out the interview he has with Der Spiegel and in Monday’s WSJ:
Der Spiegel:
SPIEGEL: As chairman of the Economic Recovery Advisory Board, you advise President Barack Obama on how to prevent such a recurrence. Is he following your guidance?
Volcker: [...]
Paul A. Samuelson, whose analytical work laid the foundation for modern economics, died Sunday. He was 94.
Mr. Samuelson, the first American to win the Nobel Prize in economics and the author of one of the most-ubiquitous college textbooks ever, was "one of the greatest teachers that economics has ever known" and "a titan [...]
Here's a full-page ad I just found in the WSJ; it seems that Bank of America considers $760 billion in lending to be “a good start”. Me, I consider it to be “too big to fail” and a clear sign that BofA needs to get smaller, not bigger. I do [...]
The WSJ has new details on how banks would pass CDO risk between each other in an improbably long chain:
One of Goldman's trades with AIG involved a financial vehicle called South Coast Funding VIII. South Coast was one of many pools of bonds backed by individual homeowners' mortgage payments' [...]
Many congratulations to Mark Whitehouse for writing an evenhanded and even positive article about walking away for the WSJ. He says that “a growing number of families are concluding that the new American dream home is a rental”, and talks about Shana Richey, a schoolteacher who took a [...]
Its early in the weekend, but we already have a leading candidate for the article that everyone will be discussing Monday morning: Goldman Fueled AIG Gambles
Excerpt:
“Goldman Sachs Group (GS) played a bigger role than has been publicly disclosed in fueling the mortgage bets that nearly felled American Insurance Group [...]
Back in October, we discussed what I described as an over reaction to Swine flu: H1N1 Fatality Rates: Overreaction?
Many of the comments disagreed.
The WSJ reports today that 1 in 6 Americans were exposed to H1N1, and of those “47 million Americans who were sickened [...]
Buyers at Temenos Residence Resort in Anguilla paid seven-figure prices for a pristine location and top-line amenities. Even “The Da Vinci Code” author Dan Brown invested here. But construction has stalled, leaving buyers in the lurch. WSJ’s Kris Hudson reports.
[...]Geez, Thursday already? Where did the week go ?
Here is what caught my eye today
• Will the real Santa Claus Rally please stand up? (MarketWatch)
• Why Didn’t Canada’s Housing Market Go Bust? (Cleveland Fed)
After all the government subsidies that have been poured into home ownership in America since the Great Depression, raising the percentage of homeowners to over 69% in 2004, the WSJ reports that defaulting and renting: "It's just a better life. It really is."
"For the 4.8 million U.S. households" [...]
