Well! New York Magazine helpfully points out that Billy Crudup will be playing former New York Federal Reserve Chairman and current Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner in HBO's adaptation of Andrew Ross Sorkin's bailout tome, Too Big to Fail.
Crudup's recent portrayals of government employees include J. Edgar Hoover in Public Enemies and the naked blue Read More
• The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, which like the 9/11 Commission, only for the Panic of 2008, may have trouble writing a comprehensive report, because senior staff have left in droves and bickering plagues those who remain. [NYT]
• Back in 2007, China asked the Fed if could buy 10% of Morgan Stanley. Yesterday, the Federal Read More
• Not content with the disaster it created in the Gulf of Mexico, BP also released a bunch of hazardous chemicals into the air at one of its Texas refineries, adding "maybe giving kids cancer" to its already impressive 2010 resume. [NYT]
• Even though Ben Bernanke said the Federal Reserve will take action if the economy continues Read More
In a speech today in Jackson Hole, Wyo., Fed chairman Ben Bernanke said that the economy is a lot worse since the last time central bankers got together for their annual nature retreat and economic conference. Growth hasn't picked up enough, the unemployment rate is still, um, excessive, and banks are still having trouble Read More
• In accordance with the past few weeks' spate of mixed economic indicators, the Bureau of Economic Analysis said the U.S. economy grew at an annual rate of 1.6 percent in the second quarter -- slower than the government's initial estimate of 2.4 percent but faster than economists had expected. [Bureau of Economic Analysis / Bloomberg]
• Investors will Read More
Earlier today, the Federal Reserve issued their eighth and final Beige Book report of 2008 (PDF here), finding, as you might expect, that economic conditions are weakening across the nation in virtually all sectors of the economy. Here is a quick recap of the dreary news in District II, which includes all of New Read More
Some highlights:
A fortnight ago, the Federal Reserve raised its base rate for the 17th time in two years, to 5.25 percent. The purpose of the hike was to fight inflation, classically defined as too much money chasing too few goods. Higher interest rates are thought to suppress the demand for credit, and with it, the specter Read More
A fortnight ago, the Federal Reserve raised its base rate for the 17th time in two years, to 5.25 percent. The purpose of the hike was to fight inflation, classically defined as too much money chasing too few goods. Higher interest rates are thought to suppress the demand for credit, and with it, the specter Read More
The news that Manhattan real-estate prices took a plunge last quarter may not be the loud crack in the sky presaging doom, but it is less than happy tidings. The New York Times reports that prices dropped a startling 13 percent in a three-month period. It also reports a similar weakening of the real-estate markets Read More
It's the new economy, stupid. Not the "New Economy" that
stock touts use to sucker the rubes with, but another new economy-one that's less obvious and less automatic when it comes to the making of millionaires. A conjunction of old- and new-economy elements has aligned itself in a pattern not seen before. We're into the new. Read MoreIn Hollywood, the screenwriter William Goldman has notoriously remarked, nobody knows anything.
Another venue about which the same might with increasing justice be said is the Op-Ed page of The New York Times , especially when it comes to economic matters. In a way, this is both understandable and inescapable. The Op-Ed page has evolved (I Read MoreMaestro: Greenspan's Fed and the American Boom , by Bob Woodward. Simon & Schuster, 270 pages, $25.
Like Saddam Hussein, Alan Greenspan has the knack of outlasting U.S. Presidents. Appointed chairman of the board of the governors of the Federal Reserve in 1987, Mr. Greenspan has seen out Ronald Reagan and George Bush, and will Read More
