Archive for the 'Economy' Category
SEC Lawyer Raised Alarm About Madoff
July 2nd, 2009Via: Reuters: A U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission lawyer warned about irregularities at Bernard Madoff’s financial management firm as far back as 2004, The Washington Post reported on Thursday, citing agency documents and sources familiar with the investigation. Genevievette Walker-Lightfoot, a lawyer in the SEC’s Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations, sent emails to a […]
Digital Media Are Overwhelming Our Consciousness and Eclipsing Our Capacity for Reflection
July 1st, 2009Via: OnTheCommons: One of the more pernicious enclosures of the commons is the enclosure of time and consciousness. It’s pernicious because it is so subtle and rarely discerned. When commercial values such as productivity and efficiency become so pervasive and internalized, they crowd out other ways of being. Our very sense of humanity — full-bodied, […]
Goldman Sachs: The Great American Bubble Machine
July 1st, 2009I know what you’ll be thinking as you read this: That my last job in the U.S. (Wall Street Chop Shop and “We Americans Were Very Clever”) was with Goldman Sachs. Good guess, but no. The firm that I worked for is dead now. Via: Rolling Stone: THE GREAT AMERICAN BUBBLE MACHINE From tech stocks […]
Green Shoots: Delinquencies Double on Least-Risky Loans
July 1st, 2009Via: Bloomberg: Delinquency rates on the least-risky mortgages more than doubled in the first quarter from a year earlier as U.S. efforts to help homeowners failed to keep pace with job losses that pushed more borrowers toward foreclosure. Prime mortgages 60 days or more past due climbed to 2.9 percent of such loans through March […]
Next Segment of the Housing Market to Crash: $1+ Million McMansions
June 30th, 2009Via: Business Insider: The new hallucination for most strapped McMansion owners is that they’ll “rent the house for a year and then sell when the market comes back.” The happy theory here is that, yes, prices are temporarily depressed, but when the green shoots really take hold, we’ll go roaring right back to 2006 levels […]
China Loans Zimbabwe US$950 Million
June 30th, 2009There will be something in the dirt that China wants to dig up. Or, maybe just the dirt would do. More: China arable land fears end reforestation drive Arable land shrinking fast Via: BBC: China has agreed to give Zimbabwe a loan of $950m (£573m) to help it revive its battered economy, Prime Minister Morgan […]
One in Four Mortgage Defaults Are “Strategic”: People Who Could Make Their Payments Are Choosing to Default Instead
June 30th, 2009Via: Economist: HOUSE prices in America have fallen so far that as many as one in five households have mortgage debt greater than the value of their homes. In a few states, borrowers are not liable for the shortfall between an unpaid loan and the resale value of the home it is secured upon. Even […]
UK Gilts Advance as Central Bank Buys Securities
June 29th, 2009Via: Bloomberg: U.K. 10-year government bonds rose as the Bank of England bought 3.5 billion pounds ($5.8 billion) of securities as part of its asset-purchase plan to revive the economy. The gains drove the yield on the gilt to its lowest level in six weeks after Britain’s biggest business lobby group said financial-services companies may […]
Failed Entrepreneurs Flee Dubai, Fear Debtor Prison
June 29th, 2009Via: Telegraph: A British entrepreneur has fled the financial crash in Dubai leaving behind hundreds of thousands pounds in debts. Simon Ford, who founded a “gift experience” company that prospered in the United Arab Emirates’ boom years, said he had been forced to escape as he feared being sent to debtors’ prison under strict bankruptcy […]
Bernard Madoff Sentenced to 150 Years in Prison
June 29th, 2009We still don’t know who his accomplices were, or where the money went. Via: Bloomberg: Bernard Madoff was sentenced to 150 years for masterminding the largest Ponzi scheme in history, six times longer than the penalties meted out to the chief executives of WorldCom Inc. and Enron Corp. Madoff appeared in court today before U.S. […]
