Alan Greenspan
Origins Of The Meltdown?
Did a well-intentioned but poorly thought out law from the 1970s lead to the economic collapse?
December 12, 2008 | Read More
Half of Nevada Underwater
About 20% of homeowners owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth. In Nevada, one out of every two houses are “underwater.”
November 2, 2008 | Read More
Delerium Tremen$
Another Through the Looking Glass day in the markets. The government released a report showing that our Gross Domestic Product contracted last quarter and that consumers actually cut their spending for the first time in 17 years, and by the largest amount since 1980. Meanwhile the Dow Jones … jumped 250 points at the opening bell.
October 30, 2008 | Read More
Bubble-omics Reborn?
Yesterday, the Dow exploded for its sixth biggest percentage gain ever. Happy times are here again, right? Wrong. The Consumer Confidence Index plunged in October from an already dour, “put your money under your mattress and leave it there until the storm blows over” 61.4 in September to “bury your cash in coffee tins and start siphoning your neighbor’s gas” 38 (38!) in October.
October 29, 2008 | Read More
Greenspan’s Mea Culpa - A Day Late, A Dollar Short
An update to my earlier post on Alan Greenspan’s testimony to Congress today. Greenspan finally conceded that trusting Wall Street to govern itself wasn’t such a good idea.
October 23, 2008 | Read More
Cue The Tar And Feathers
Alan Greenspan testified on Capitol Hill this morning. If you’re looking for one person to blame for the mess we’re in, Greenspan could and probably should be him.
October 23, 2008 | Read More
Any Fool Could Have Seen This Coming - Including This One (Part Two)
Way back in 1988, I wrote a book called The Captive American. I happened to glance at chapters 14, 15, and 16 the other day, which discussed the economic troubles facing our country back then. I was stunned by how little has changed. What’s the old saying? Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it? Take a look at what I wrote 20 years ago and see if our failure to learn from our mistakes doesn’t break your heart the way it broke mine:
October 14, 2008 | Read More
Paulson Caused the Crisis
The net capital rule was there to make sure Wall Street could bail itself out in case of a crisis. But because the SEC gave geniuses like Henry Paulson what they wanted and eliminated the rule in 2004, we the taxpayers now have to pay the tab for their recklessness. This is the man that now wants a $700 billion blank check - to fix the crisis that he caused!?
October 3, 2008 | Read More
Reason #67: This Didn’t Have to Happen!
Unfortunately, the boom and bust cycle of recent years is nothing new. Back in the 1920s, our financial system acted the same way. The good times were never going to end, so greedy traders just kept buying and buying, and borrowing and borrowing to do it. Then the party ended. The overvalued stock market crashed, all that easy money dried up, and billions of dollars in bonds went into default. Then banks started to collapse because, just as today, their ledger books were loaded with delinquent loans. Pretty soon, all that bad debt took them under.
There’s no reason why the same…
August 27, 2008 | Read More
Reason #55: Home Inequity - Wall Street’s Subprime Madness
A friend of mine bought a home in the early 1990s for $265,000. By 2007, it was worth a million dollars. But his wife is a spendaholic. She’s been using their house like a giant ATM machine. Since the housing market started going nuts a few years ago, they’ve refinanced five times and sucked all their equity dry.
Like millions of other suckers out there in the real estate market, they thought the good times would never end, that people would just keep paying more and more for houses. But the wild ride is over now and their place is already…
August 27, 2008 | Read More
