You’ve heard the headlines. This morning at 9:00am ET, President Bush announced that the Treasury Department, acting without authorization from Congress, will execute several key provisions of the bailout legislation that was defeated by Senate Republicans on December 11. Let me tell what we know and what we don’t know at this point. There are no printed statements yet at the White House or the | Read More »
This is just a brief note to make you all aware that it’s being a very remarkable week in the Land of Fixed-Income and Monetary Policy. I’ll post much more on this topic as soon as I can, but the Federal Reserve has qualitatively changed the nature of their response to the financial crisis. As of this week, they’ve embarked on what is called “quantitative | Read More »
Last week was Citigroup’s turn. Citi is one of the world’s best-known banking brands, and was once America’s largest bank by market capitalization. Last week, investors knocked 60% off the value of Citi’s stock, in a nerve-rattling selloff that was too reminiscent of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers for comfort. Citigroup is too large to fail. It has about 200 million accounts in more than | Read More »
Today is Day 6 of the “New Trade”: the death and rebirth of the financial system as we know it. Every single day this week has brought things that no one working today has ever seen before. Yesterday was no exception It was a day of unprecedented volatility in the credit and money markets. The prices of short-duration Treasury securities traversed ranges that are usually | Read More »
There are two points I want to make to you this morning, as the impact of yesterday’s nationalization of the mortgage GSEs works its way through the system. Here’s more information. First: while this is most definitely a fundamental change in the structure of the mortgage markets, it is not a change in our government’s existing policy of deep intervention in housing. The people who | Read More »
![[RS]](/t/img/logo-footer.jpg){kind=logo}