Tag: Greenwich
The Sasquatch of macro indicators
Economic theory says that there is a perfect “neutral interest rate” where everything stays in line… Mohamed A. El-Erian discusses this in his Bloomberg opinion piece What You Should Know About r*… There’s just one small problem… “r* is not directly observable”… This means that the correct level is only know with 20/20 hindsight…
Ink-stained wretch earns star turn
Diana Henriques of the New York Times broke many of the key stories on Madoff in 2008 through 2010… And then she was the only journalist to interview him in prison… But she outdid herself this year, when she played herself in the HBO movie Wizard of Lies… iNews in its story Diana Henriques: the […]
NY Post floats the ‘R’ word
The New York Post is asking the right question today: A New Recession?… With some good observations by Aparna Mathur, an AEI resident scholar… The U.S. birth rate is down… Immigration is down… New family formation is down… Older people are consuming less because they are concerned they may outlive their retirement savings… And labor […]
Madoff dishes in depo
Bernie Madoff has given a three day deposition, as part of civil suits in the ongoing liquidation… Bloomberg reports in Bernie Madoff: ‘I Always Wanted to Please Everybody’ the big reveal, which is that his core investors (Picower, Shapiro, Chais and Levy) knew from the start that he was a fraud… Although Bernie is not […]
Banco Popular deal symptom of ongoing reckoning in Europe
Gretchen Morgenson of the New York Times in her piece Lessons From the Collapse of Banco Popular reminds us of the continued perilous state of the European banking system, which never properly deleveraged after the Financial Crisis…Banco Popular, Spain’s fifth largest bank, was suddenly sold in a government-sponsored rescue to Banco Santander… This was the […]
Survey: US investors living in Lake Wobegon, where all returns above average
Lisa Abramowicz of Bloomberg Gadfly has a thought provoking article today: Stop Fooling Yourself About 8% Easy Returns… Legg Mason surveyed 900 investors in the United States, whose average expected rate of return was 8.64% (non-retirees had even higher expectations, at 9.27%)… The current dividend yield of the S&P is 1.9%, investment grade bonds yield […]
Manhattan mega foreclosure tops record
The largest foreclosure in U.S. history has been reported by Bloomberg… A Second, Even Bigger Foreclosure Reaches NYC Billionaires’ Row describes a $35 million loan made by Banque Havilland SA secured by a full floor apartment at One57, the one of the tallest residential buildings in New York City, located at 157 West 57th Street… […]
Has a belated bubble formed up north?
Canada missed the U.S. housing bubble of 2005 – 2007 because of tighter mortgage rules… As a result, Canadian housing sailed through the Financial Crisis… Subsequently, because of favorable demographics, including high immigration rates, Canadian housing has dramatically outperformed the U.S.… But markets adjust… Interesting essay by Ritholtz asset manager Ben Carlson entitled Canada’s Housing […]
Market left guessing by Beijing mandarins’ ‘systemic risk’ move
Chinese regulators have targeted three high-flying stocks as a “systemic risk”… The questions is whether this is a one-off disciplining of some now out-of-favor parties, or the start of a major new regulatory trend… The New York Times has the basics in its story Shares Plunge as China Voices Concern Over ‘Systemic Risks’ written by […]
When ‘Smart Beta’ gets crowded
Man Bites Dog… Burton Malkiel, the Princeton professor whose classic book “A Random Walk Down Wall Street” presaged in 1973 indexing as an improvement over active stock investing, has now embraced Smart Beta… James B. Stewart’s New York Times article, An Index-Fund Evangelist Is Straying From His Gospel, sets forth his case… One giant issue remains… It’s […]
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