Bank of England keeps rates at historical low (CNBC.com)
NetNet With John Carney
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What Warren Buffett once called "financial weapons of mass destruction" are firing again, with securitization and shadow banking at post-crisis highs.
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Economists Agree? Left, Right, And Center in Accord: Things Are Bad.
Posted By: Ash Bennington
Rich Gold Bugs Stock Up. Big Time.
Posted By: Ash Bennington
Currency Wars: (CNBC.com) CNBC’s Jeff Cox talks exchange rates, quantitative easing, and the battle for exports.
The Case Of The Missing "Cash For Gold" Ads
Posted By: John Carney
Have you noticed that those cash for gold ads that were everywhere a year ago have mostly vanished?
How For-Profit Schools Got Liberal Activists To Carry Their Water
Posted By: John Carney
Mike Elk has just pointed out that the liberal activists who have been fighting against the critics of for-profit schools are basically bought and paid-for stooges .
Former Clinton administration White House counsel Lanny Davis penned an op-ed arguing that "the notion of pervasive, systemic abuse and fraud as suggested by [FrontPoint fund manager Steve] Eisman, more with innuendo than hard facts, may not stand up to scrutiny."
He complained vigorously that Eisman's testimony to a Senate panel on for-profit schools should be discounted because Eisman is shorting the sector. Davis never bothered to mention that he is working as a lobbyist for the Coalition for Education Success, a trade association of for-profit colleges.
The Broken Promise Of AIG
Posted By: John Carney
Jim Millstein has certainly not been shy when it comes to talking to journalists about the Treasury's new AIG exit strategy.
Getty Images
Robert E. Lewis, Senior Vice President and Chief Risk Officer, American International Group(center), being sworn in during a Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC.
Yesterday, Andrew Ross Sorkin's column was entirely based on conversations with Millstein about the exit strategy. Now Felix Salmon has apparently interviewed Millstein for over an hour about the plans .
Millstein seems to be a pretty persuasive guy. Both Sorkin and Salmon come away convinced that his exit plan, which involves having the government exchange its non-cumulative preferred shares for common stock, makes sense. Salmon, for instance, offers an excellent explanation to questions raised by Kid Dynamite about why the US Treasury would trade senior , preferred shares for common \(hint: the preferred shares don't have a guaranteed dividend so might never spin out any cash.\)
Hugh Hendry's Guide To Shorting China
Posted By: John Carney
Over the summer, money managers turned markedly bullish on China .
Kick Images | Photodisc | Getty Images
Flag of the People's Republic of China
Only a handful of hedge fund managers have put money to work shorting China.
It's tough to short China. Foreigners are barred from directly investing in Chinese companies. Shorting Chinese stocks, even for Chinese natives, is tricky. China only began allowing short selling this year. So China bears have to get creative to short markets there.
Most notable among the China shorts is Kynikos Associates founder Jim Chanos and Eclectica Asset Management founder Hugh Hendry. Chanos has been warning about excessive credit in China and the potential for a disruption in the housing market to spread to China's broader economy.
David Stockman: I Invest In Anything Bernanke Can't Destroy
Posted By: John Carney
“I invest in anything that Bernanke can’t destroy, including gold, canned beans, bottled water and flashlight batteries," David Stockman tells Jennifer DePaul of the Fiscal Times .
Getty Images
Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Ben Bernanke
Stockman rose to fame as a Hayek quoting Congressman who became Ronald Reagan's budget director. His conversations with journalist William Greider created a firestorm because Stockman was deeply critical of the Reagan administration's supply-side budget practices. These days he's working on a book about the financial crisis.
Jan Hatzius Versus Abby Joseph Cohen
Posted By: John Carney
Yesterday the chief economist for Goldman Sachs, Jan Hatzius, reportedly said that the chances of the U.S. sliding back into a recession are between 25 and 30 percent. Today he is out with a note describing our economic prospects as being either "fairly bad" or "very bad."
MEOW — The Hostile Bidding Continues
Posted By: Nicole Lapin
Tech companies have been on a shopping spree, and VeriFone — with $400 million in cash — tells me they are ready to spend, spend, spend.
CNBC.com
Negotiating Pay
The claws have come out. This time it’s electronic payment device maker VeriFone versus rival Hypercom. VeriFone's CEO tells me that he's moving forward with its hostile takeover of Hypercom after two rejections in as many weeks.
“We continue to be interested in the business but we’re very disciplined buyers,” VeriFone CEO Doug Bergeron told me.
Shock and Awe: The U.S. Deficit Problem
Posted By: Lori Ann LaRocco
Earlier this week I was driving my kids to school when I saw a vandalized street sign that was so striking that I had to pull over and take a picture of it.
Someone had spray painted over the a sign announcing that a road work project was funded by "The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act." The words spray-painted on the sign: "Funded by China."
I live in a nice quiet, country town in New Jersey where the bear and deer are seen on a regular basis, coyote sometimes pop up and even the occasional mountain lion has been spotted. It's hardly the kind of place where you'd expect vandals to be making comments on international debt flows.
The three words scrawled on that sign should be a warning shot for Congress. Many Americans are deeply troubled by the amount of debt the government is accumulating. The level of reliance on foreign capital, especially Chinese capital, to support our economy is worrying. I decided to get to the phones after I clicked that picture to get some Congressional reaction to what I saw.
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Senior writer for CNBC.com, covering the gamut of issues affecting the stock market and the economy.
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Wall Street
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Rallies have to end sometime for sure, but history suggests the current one doesn't have to end anytime soon.
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Gary Parr, Lazard vice president, discusses how investor activism impacts corporate governance; and explains how regulations and stricter capital controls are impacting big banks.
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Merck said it has entered into a $5 billion share repurchase agreement with Goldman Sachs.