Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
When earlier today we read a report in the Greek Enikonomia, according to which Greek taxpayers would be forced to declare all cash “under the mattress” (including inside) or boxes that contain more than 15,000 euros as well as jewelry and precious stones (including gold) worth over 30,000 euros, starting in 2016, we assumed this…
Wikimedia CommonsCredit Suisse analyst Robert Moskow can’t believe how expensive his Thanksgiving turkey was this year. On Hormel’s fourth quarter earnings call on Tuesday, Moskow opened his question to Hormel management by noting that he just bought his turkey at Stop & Shop. And boy was it expensive. Here’s Moskow, via Seeking Alpha: “Hey there….
Check if there is a lead inset render main article body Ever since the global financial crisis, economists have groped for reasons to explain why growth in the U.S. and abroad has repeatedly disappointed, citing everything from fiscal austerity to the euro meltdown. They are now coming to realize that one of the stiffest headwinds…
Neel Kashkari, the at-the-time little-known Goldman Sachs banker who was put in charge (by Treasury Secretary and former Goldman Sachs CEO Hank Paulson) of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (that is, the bank bailouts) in 2008, has been named the new president of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank. As head of TARP, Kashkari was responsible…
Men and women have been power-starting their work day with coffee since the 1600s when the new settlers of New Amsterdam began to drink it instead of tea. We chug it steaming hot from paper cups on commuter trains, we sip it from insulated thermoses while speeding along the highway, we wait on line to…
Welcome to a very special edition of people are worried about unicorns. They really are! The most worrying unicorn of them all, Square, went public last night at $9 per share, below its $11 to $13 marketing range. That gives it a valuation of $2.9 billion, not even a tricorn, and a sharp fall from the $6 billion sexacorn valuation…
To many, Finland is a member of the euro zone’s fiscally conservative core, alongside Germany. But in the words of its own finance minister, “basically, we are the sick man of Europe.” Indeed, new statistics show just how lousy Finland is performing financially. The Finnish economy is 11% smaller than its 2008 peak, making it…
Remember back when you were a kid? You would just do things. You never thought to yourself, “What are the relative merits of learning baseball versus football?” You just ran around the playground and played baseball and football. You built sand castles and played tag and asked silly questions and looked for bugs and dug…
Europe’s central bankers used to dismiss core inflation, a measure of price gains that excludes food and energy, as a fixation of economists who don’t eat or drive. But less so now. European Central Bank President Mario Draghi singled it out on Thursday, saying it’s “somewhat weakened.” Mark Carney last week said the gauge is important to watch…
Goldman Sachs seems worried about bond-market liquidity. In a note to clients Tuesday, Charles Himmelberg and Chris Henson at Goldman Sachs dissect the recent decline in dealer inventories of investment-grade corporate bonds. This sounds arcane and boring, but their analysis is one of the most important and troubling things we’ve read about bond-market liquidity. Now,…