Fortegra and Life of the South Increase Focus on Payment Protection
The Heroic Professor Nesson
Feb. 24: Membership Drive Kickoff Event
Is Spain Getting Left Behind?
“The [Head of One of the Biggest Dark Pools Said] the Amount of Money Devoted to High-frequency Trading Could ‘QUINTUPLE Between this Year and...
A "High Functioning" Cocaine User
Social Media Risk Tolerance Quiz for Firms
IMF warns the global recession isn't over, will China meet the call?
Help Set Florida Chamber’s 2010 Legislative Agenda …
The Florida Chamber of Commerce’s annual survey brings together the collective voices of thousands of employers for the legislative session and it’s your opportunity to speak to your elected officials in Tallahassee with one voice as a united business community. In the survey, you can provide input on topics including taxes, insurance, workforce issues, lawsuit abuse, healthcare, constitutional amendments, energy solutions and more. We also encourage you to comment about issues that are not yet mentioned in the survey.
Earlier I posted some graphs on the surge in prime delinquecies from the OCC and OTS Release Mortgage Metrics Report for First Quarter 2009 See: OCC and OTS: Prime Delinquencies Surge in Q1 Here is some info on types of modifications: While 185,156 mortgages were modified in the first quarter of 2009, 122,398 were “combination modifications” that changed more than one term of the loan. Of the modifications made in the first quarter of 2009, 70.2 percent included a capitalization of missed payments and fees, 63.2 percent included a reduction in interest rate, and 25.1 included an extended term. By comparison, 12.6 percent of the mortgages received modifications that froze the interest rate, 1.8 percent included a reduction of principal, and 1.1 percent included a deferral of principal
First a couple of quotes: From Bloomberg: Shiller Sees ‘Improvement’ in Rate of Home-Price Drop Home prices saw a “striking improvement in the rate of decline” in April and trading in funds launched today indicates investors believe the U.S. housing slump is nearing a bottom, said Yale University economist Robert Shiller. “At this point, people are thinking the fall is over,” Shiller, co-founder of the home price index that bears his name, said in a Bloomberg Radio interview today.
JPMorgan Sued for Sale of High Risk, Illiquid Real Estate Investments
Billionaire Len Blavatnik filed a lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase this week, claiming that the investment bank had mismanaged a $1 billion investment account that held assets on behalf of Blavatnik’s company, Access Industries. The suit alleges that JPMorgan’s brokers invested the company’s assets in risky, illiquid real estate securities that were inconsistent with the conservative investment objectives of the company, causing $98 million in losses that would not have occurred had the money been properly invested
Restaurants: 21st Consecutive Month of Traffic Declines
Note: Any reading below 100 shows contraction. From the National Restaurant Association (NRA): Restaurant Industry Outlook Softened in May as Restaurant Performance Index Posted First Decline in Five Months The outlook for the restaurant industry was dampened somewhat in May, as the National Restaurant Association’s comprehensive index of restaurant activity registered its first decline in five months.
A CIPS Fellow takes us through the tender evaluation process from the buyers point of view giving valuable insight to sales professionals on how to increase your chances of winning a bid
Three or Four Mistakes in American Monetary Policy?
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/delong91 In the circles in which I travel, there is near-universal consensus that here in America our monetary philosopher-princes have made three serious mistakes. This consensus is almost always qualified by fervent declarations that we have been very well served by our Federal Reserve chairs and others since at least Paul Volcker’s accession to the chair at the end of the table in the Eccles’ Building’s conference room, and that each of us who has not sat in that chair knows that he or she would have made worse mistakes, but nevertheless there is a consensus that mistakes were made when: the Federal Reserve and the Treasury decided to nationalize AIG rather than to support AIG’s counterparties last fall, allowing financiers to pretend that their strategies were fundamentally sound rather than things that would have shut down their firms had the Feds not paid AIG’s bills. the Federal Reserve and the Treasury decided to let Lehman Brothers go into an uncontrolled bankruptcy last fall in order to try to teach financiers that having an ill-capitalized counterparty was not riskless and that people should not expect the government to come to their rescue always
Sacramento California FREE training classes for Service Disabled Veteran Owned Businesses (SDVOSB / DVBE)
The following information has been provided by the CA DVBE Alliance about their upcoming free training classes for vets and disabled vets in Sacramento California: Overview: A 24-hour program presented in six four-hour sessions that gives attendees the opportunity to learn or to review basic business skills relative to starting and operating a small business. Who Should Attend: Disabled veterans and (on a space-available basis) veterans who currently own and operate a small business, or who are considering becoming an entrepreneur, and employees of these companies
The recent issue of IP Law & Business has a fascinating Q&A with Harvard law professor Charles Nesson, who is representing Joel Tenenbaum, a 25-year-old doctoral student being sued by five record companies under the Digital Theft Deterrence and Copyright Act of 1999. Tenenbaum refused to settle, and Nesson is arguing “that the law is unconstitutional because it allows for ‘grossly excessive’ awards.” While it’s demeaning to have to hope for a just statutory interpretation by fake judges appointed by the criminal state of an artificial positive law enacted by “law”-makers of another department of the same criminal gang, it’s heartening to see some people fighting back, and some otherwise mainstream legal professionals fighting for them. I doubt Nesson is a libertarian or against IP completely, but some of his comments are great
The Public Plan for Health Insurance: In Which Greg Mankiw Confesses to Remarkable Ignorance and Asks a Question that We Answer…
He wonders: Greg Mankiw’s Blog: The Arbiter of Ignorance : In a brief blog post on healthcare, Paul Krugman says that George Will and I are “either remarkably ignorant or simply disingenuous.” I cannot speak for George, but I can attest that I am completely ingenuous. So I suppose I must be remarkably ignorant.
Briefly…Top Ten Tweets (From FDI & ODI to Chinese Brands & Green Dams)
This weeks highlights from our Twitter feed , include the following stories: Service firms at the fore – RT @fonstuinstra : Chinese brands take off at home – Rupert Hoogewerf http://ff.im/-4soGb 9:58 AM Jun 26th from TweetDeck RMB30 .7 bn – RT @sinostream : http://xi.gs/05t0 Green Stimulus Spending Returns to Earth 8:46 AM Jun 26th from TweetDeck (see the related blog post for more) T2 mixer: Coca-Cola to Expand in China Remote Areas http://bit.ly/aEkrf 8:29 AM Jun 26th from TweetDeck IPO ’d: China’s first IPO in 10 months details share issue http://bit.ly/CPlh48:13 AM Jun 26th from TweetDeck ( see the related blog post for more ) Corruption: China reclaims $4 billion of embezzled public money http://bit.ly/F0PkS 8:11 AM Jun 26th from TweetDeck ( see the related blog post for more ) We’ll be seeing a lot of this.
Novelist Mark Helprin talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about copyright and the ideas in his book, Digital Barbarism. Helprin argues for an extension rather than a reduction in the length of time that authors have control over their work. He also argues that technology is often not attuned to human needs and physical constraints, claiming that tranquility is elusive in modern times.
Pessimism of the intellect! But optimism of the will, Andrew! I must say I want my sensible bipartisan center back, I want it back real bad. Andrew: Climate Vote Shows Why I Am Still a Man Without a Party : I had three reactions to yesterday’s cap-and-trade vote, two of which came from The New York Times article that I read this morning and one of which came from Stan’s very smart post. Here they are: From the article, “Only eight Republicans voted for the bill, which runs to more than 1,300 pages.” From the article, “The bill would grant a majority of the permits free in the early years of the program, to keep costs low.” From Stan, “But the bigger story is that the White House once again has demonstrated an excellent ability to get Congress to go along with the things it wants.” And now let me take each one in turn.
Washington Post Crashed-and-Burned Watch (Ceci Connolly/Health Care Coverage Department)
Why would the Washington Post have a health-care story written by a reporter who knows neither legislative process nor health-care policy substance. Outsourced to Robert Waldmann (Robert! Paul and Nadine Mende say hello!): Decimate or Alienate : A good sign of a totally bogus argument is reliance on contradictory presumptions of fact
TJ & The Bear asks: “ocrenter had an interesting question over at JtR’s BubbleInfo . Specifically, what percentage of homeowners that sold during the height of the bubble (04 to 06) went to cash and rented?” ocrenter is obviously curious about “cash on the housing sidelines”. We don’t have the data to answer that question, but using the Census Bureau Residential Vacancies and Homeownership report , we can see that the number of occupied rental units bottomed in Q2 2004.
Definitely worth reading , with a variety of topics covered. On one topic, he says It’s difficult to look at, for example, the very low unemployment rates we saw in the early 2000s and say that represented an economy in which everyone was working. Unemployment rates were at roughly the same level that they were in the late 1960s, but if you look at prime-age males, the fraction actually working who were, say, 30 to 40 years old was quite a bit lower in 2001 because there was a big increase in the number who were out of the labor force in that age category
DRAFT Lecture Notes for September 1 & 3, 2009: Econ 115: Twentieth Century Economic History
The state of the world’s economy in 1870, back at the start of the “long” twentieth century. (DRAFTS only–without reference notes yet, and saying a number of things I think are wrong…) Download now or preview on posterous Download now or preview on posterous
Cicero: The Britons Are too Stupid to Make Good Slaves
I have been looking for this quote for years! Caesar, in writing home, said of the Britons, “They are the most ignorant people I have ever conquered. They cannot be taught music.” Cicero, in writing to his friend Atticus, advised him not to buy slaves in England, “because,” said he, “they cannot be taught to read, and are the ugliest and most stupid race I ever saw.” William Wells Brown (1863), The Black Man: His Antecedents, His Genius, and His Achievements (Boston: James Redpath), pp. 33-4; quoted on p.
Truck Tonnage Index Increased in May, Off 11% from May 2008
From the American Trucking Association: ATA Truck Tonnage Index Increased 3.2 Percent in May Click on graph for larger image in new window. The American Trucking Associations’ advance seasonally adjusted (SA) For-Hire Truck Tonnage Index rose for the first time since February 2009, gaining 3.2 percent in May. May’s increase, which raised the SA index to 102.3, wasn’t large enough to offset the March through April cumulative reduction of 6.7 percent.
Photo Contest 2009 – Promoting Gender Equality in Education
The theme of this photo contest brings to mind Tashabos, Efham, and a number of other CIPE partner programs that deserve to be showcased – spread the word! As part of the initiative to promote gender equality in education, UNESCO Bangkok – along with the United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative (UNGEI), East Asia and Pacific (EAP) and South Asia (SA) – is pleased to invite entries for the Photo Contest 2009 on the theme of: Reversing Realities: Seeking Gender Equality in Education . The 13 winning photos will be announced at the end of September 2009
Bank Failure #42: Neighborhood Community Bank, Newnan, Georgia
From the FDIC: CharterBank, West Point, Georgia Assumes All of the Deposits of Neighborhood Community Bank, Newnan, Georgia Neighborhood Community Bank, Newnan, Georgia, was closed today by the Georgia Department of Banking and Finance, which appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as receiver. … As of March 31, 2009, Neighborhood Community Bank had total assets of $221.6 million and total deposits of approximately $191.3 million.
Bank Failure #41: Community Bank of West Georgia, Villa Rica, Georgia
Summer break arrives Zero rest for the wicked, Neither for Blair’s crew. by Soylent Green is People From the FDIC: FDIC Approves the Payout of Insured Deposits of Community Bank of West Georgia, Villa Rica, Georgia Community Bank of West Georgia, Villa Rica, Georgia, was closed today by the Georgia Department of Banking and Finance, which appointed the FDIC as receiver. To protect the depositors, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) will mail checks to insured depositors for their insured funds on Monday morning, June 29th
Alleged “public intellectual” Richard Posner has discovered a possible solution to the plight of dying newspapers — more copyright law: Expanding copyright law to bar online access to copyrighted materials without the copyright holder’s consent, or to bar linking to or paraphrasing copyrighted materials without the copyright holder’s consent, might be necessary to keep free riding on content financed by online newspapers from so impairing the incentive to create costly news-gathering operations that news services like Reuters and the Associated Press would become the only professional, nongovernmental sources of news and opinion. Jeff Jarvis has an appropriate rebuttal: Good God.
NLP in bidding Much is written about ‘value add’ and ‘value proposition’ in bidding these days and rightly so. Articulating the business reasons why a prospective client should do business with you is essential in any sales situation – and particularly so in writing bids and tenders. But there’s one value proposition that could do with rather more attention than it currently gets – and that’s the value proposition that an organisation’s senior management gives to its bid teams.
Felix Salmon: are you saying that the web has increased the amount of fun that people can have without spending money, or at least has increased the nation’s aggregate fun-to-spending ratio? Victor Hugo on John Brown: For — yes, let America know it, and ponder on it well — there is something more terrible than Cain slaying Abel: It is Washington slaying Spartacus! DeLong: Let Us Now Praise Right Wing Hacks (David Broder/Washington Post Edition) Ezra Klein: The Truth About the Health Insurance Industry Eric Rauchway: An engine of state, not of law Brad DeLong: PSAT Brad DeLong: Yet Another Gregg Easterbrook Train Wreck Brad DeLong: One Trouble With the The Trouble With Diversity John Quiggin: Refuted economic doctrines #9: Real Business Cycle Theory Cosma Shalizi: Graphs, Trees, Materialism, Fishing William Butler Yeats: Among School Children
We’ve been busy the last few weeks putting the finishing touches on our brand new data platform and news feed and, as of today, those new features go live. Combined with the articles users like you have worked so hard on, these developments get us another step closer to being the most comprehensive, free, finance research portal on the web.Anyway, you’ll notice some big changes with the way our articles present data. Unlike other sites that simply fill your screen up with a thicket of raw numbers, the Wikinvest Data Central calls out a company’s most important metrics and displays all this information graphically
Hoisted from the Archives; Yet Another Gregg Easterbrook Train Wreck (Why Oh Why Can’t We Have a Better Press Corps?)
This morning's observation from Zachary Roth that the mainline press corps has no way–in fact, regards it as a breach of ethics–to tell its readers that important political figures are likely to be lying reminded me of the other major grave deficiency of the press corps: its inability to exercise any quality control over its own members. And that reminded me of thus just-ain't-so story from four years ago: Brad DeLong's Website: Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps?
In email, maureendowdsfriendwhodoesntwantanycredit@gmail.com writes, contra those who say, “At least Mark Sanford is sincere!”: It’s hard for me to find anything decent or honest about a politician who rejects stimulus money for a state with the 2nd highest unemployment rate in the country out of some misguided loyalty to an uncompromising political ideology. I understand the point you’re trying to make here, but there is nothing even remotely admirable or honest about putting ones narrow and misguided beliefs ahead of the livelihoods of the voters who you are nominally elected to serve.
In Praise of Good Government by Barack Hussein Obama
Stan Collender watches Obama take his responsibilities to the nation seriously: Attention All Deficit Hawks: Do You Know Where Your Veto Threats Are? | Capital Gains and Games : The White House yesterday did something that should truly warm the hearts of deficit hawks everywhere: it threated to veto the 2010 military authorization bill over two big spending issues — the F22 and the alternate engine for the F35. A little background. Although both of these programs were questioned for years by the Bush White House, Congress kept insisting that the Pentagon spend the money anyway and the president always went along. This year, The F22 was a target of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates …
