Crash Survival Zone

By Paul Krugman
Would the Obama administration’s plan for financial reform do what has to be done? Yes and no.
Yes, the plan would plug some big holes in regulation. But as described, it wouldn’t end the skewed incentives that made the current crisis inevitable.
Let’s start with the good news.
Our current system of financial regulation dates back [...]

Nouriel Roubini, the New York University economist who accurately forecast the bursting of the housing bubble and the resulting economic contraction, has become famous for his pessimism—he has been the gloomiest of the doomsayers. Which is what makes his current outlook surprising: Roubini believes that the Obama administration’s policy makers—and especially the much-maligned Tim Geithner—have [...]

“Home,” wrote Robert Frost, “is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” Small wonder that when we’re faced with economic hardship, that’s where we retreat. As Rogan Kersh, a professor of public policy at New York University, recently told ABC News, recessions bring out our nesting instincts. [...]

by Martin D. Weiss, Ph.D.

While most pundits are still grasping at anecdotal “green shoots” to celebrate the beginning of a “recovery,” the hard data just released by the Federal Reserve reveals a continuing collapse of unprecedented dimensions.

It’s all in the Fed’s Flow of Funds Report for the first quarter of 2009, which I’ve posted on [...]

Defeating the Cartel… With Profit, Part 2
… Consider that, although the Fundamentals for Gold have rarely been more Bullish, it is still below its all-time high and still suffers from periodic Cartel Takedowns. [The Cartel’s Motivation for these Takedowns is clear. To maintain its power and profit The Cartel must prevent increasing legitimacy for Gold [...]

The Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government has issued a State Revenue Flash Report discussing an across the board enormous drop in personal income tax revenues.

Total personal income tax collections in January-April 2009 were 26 percent, or about $28.8 billion below the level of a year ago in states for which we have data. In [...]

Strauss-Kahn referred to credit growth as a sign that financial activity was beginning to pick up
The worst may yet lie ahead for the world economy in the current financial crisis, the head of the International Monetary Fund warned today.

Speaking during a trip to Kazakhstan, Dominique Strauss-Kahn said he largely agreed with the weekend conclusion of [...]

By Dave Lindorff

… While the Obama administration and the Treasury and the Fed are bulldozing funds into the coffers of the big banks, allegedly to get them to lend, the banks, from the largest to the smallest, are pulling back, afraid that borrowers will end up going bust on them. So much for economic stimulus [...]

By Les Leopold

The Obama Administration has put together a wide-ranging set of reforms that attempts to re-regulate the financial sector. It calls for a new consumer protection agency to protect us from mortgage mischief. For the first time, it regulates some (but not all) derivatives. It calls for new controls on “too-big-to-fail” institutions. It attempts [...]

Another U.S. retail icon falls victim to the recession
Struggling retailer Eddie Bauer Holdings Inc., which began as a Seattle fishing shop, later outfitted the first American to climb Mt. Everest and made thousands of newfangled down jackets and sleeping bags for the military during World War II, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Wednesday.

Still [...]