Well, I am back at my desk and no worse for the wear and tear. These are what I started my work week with:

• The Housing Recovery In One Index (Pragmatic Capitalism)
What actually happens at Davos? (New Yorker)
Krugman: What Ails Europe?  (NYT)
• Berkshire Selects Manager to Eventually Replace Buffett as CEO (Bloomberg) see also A Buffett Heir, but Who? (WSJ)
• Investigators Scrutinize MF Global Wire Transfers (DealBook)
• The Rise of the Super-Rich (NYT) see also China’s Billionaire Congress Makes Its U.S. Peer Look Poor (Businessweek)
• Builders Feel Bite in China (WSJ)
• Bankers escape big penalties in FDIC failed bank cases (Reuters)
• That Greek debt sustainability analysis in full (FT Alphavillesee also G-20 Snubs Germany on IMF Funding (Bloomberg)
• The new hipster cities of America: Who’s emerging as the “next Austin”? (Austin CultureMap)

What are you reading?

Buyers Take a Shine to ‘Junk’

Source: WSJ

Category: Financial Press


15 Responses to “10 Monday AM Reads”

  1. Robespierre says:

    The MF Global reads like a who is who in criminal financial enterprise without a person in jail now or ever. Demonstrating once again that Obama’s promise to investigate/prosecute financial crimes was just another big fat lie.

  2. rd says:

    The MF Global wire transfers should end up being fraud, embezzlement, or SarbOx accounting violations. If they can’t nail somebody high up with one of those three, then all the little people need to pull their money out of anything that looks or smells like an MF Global type of company since it is clear that regulators and law enforcement will be completely unable to protect you. At that point, it is simply caveat emptor and you need to assume that any of these firms could potentially go bankrupt at any time taking a bunch of your money with it.

    It is most likely a SarbOx violation as they had enough time to clean out the whole customer kitty if they were really intent on getting their money.

  3. willid3 says:

    the never ending oil saga.


    where its never what is reported in the news.

    demand has been tanking in the US. much more than it increased in China.

  4. willid3 says:

    tax cuts. the biggest source of deficits


    and this is from this who claim they to lower the deficit. and debt.

    instead they will increase it!

  5. Sechel says:


    Mckenna puts out a great column. Are auditors reporting fraud and is the SEC sitting on known cases and not protecting investors.

  6. Jojo says:

    Why oil won’t come down much any time soon.
    February 23, 2012

    The Saudis Need Those High Oil Prices
    They are spending billions to create jobs and preserve the regime

    The world last year watched to see if Saudi Arabia would suffer the same instability that swept away other regimes in the Middle East. The question now is whether the world’s largest oil supplier needs to raise prices to sustain ramped-up spending intended to calm its citizens. Higher prices would be bad news for Western governments, which need affordable oil to nurture their economic recoveries.

    The Saudis rarely spell out exactly what they are thinking on the topic, but there are signs their strategy has changed, and they are increasingly willing to raise prices. Still, they seem not inclined to let prices go sky-high. A year ago Saudi oil minister Ali Al-Naimi said oil at $70 to $80 a barrel was fair. Then on Nov. 21, Al-Naimi said he was “very happy” with current crude prices; on that day oil traded close to $98 a barrel. Prices are now around $106 a barrel.

    The bottom line: Saudi Arabia is spending at least $130 billion on a jobs and housing program at home, an effort that relies on expensive oil.


  7. reedsch says:


    This is a bit over the top, but I have so far found no information source that I can safely ignore 100% of the time.

  8. VennData says:

    Warren Buffett shoots back at Chris Christie

    “It’s sort of a touching response to a $1.2 trillion deficit, isn’t it? That somehow the American people will all send in checks and take care of it?” Buffett said in an interview with CNBC.


    “Shut up” was a nice thing for a Governor to say to a CEO.. imagine if Obama had said something like that, it would be called “anti-business.”

    In fact Obama hasn’t said anything that bad to businessmen, only in the minds of the Chamber of Commerce who want to justify their lobbying expenses is Obama “anti-business.” Well also in the mind of anybody not looking at the facts, and listening to sound bite politics like Christie.

  9. Bill in SF says:

    What Ails Europe?

    Once again, Krugman wades through the b.s. with a a reasoned review of the facts. I notice he calls them GIPSI nations (Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy) rather than PIIGS.

    “So what does ail Europe? The truth is that the story is mostly monetary. By introducing a single currency without the institutions needed to make that currency work, Europe effectively reinvented the defects of the gold standard — defects that played a major role in causing and perpetuating the Great Depression.”

    “The next time you hear people invoking the European example to demand that we destroy our social safety net or slash spending in the face of a deeply depressed economy, here’s what you need to know: they have no idea what they’re talking about.”

  10. willid3 says:

    if you think you have it bad, its not even close to being bad as those who work to ship you your orders, not much better than peonage or slavery. just tad bit better, but not much


  11. Arequipa01 says:

    Hipster, ugh.

    Austin was cool right up until the first member of Son Yuma was killed riding his bike on North Lamar, by a turd from California. Place was ruined by late ’96. Just a bunch wankers resisting the urge to get frosted highlights in their hair.

  12. Jojo says:

    @willid3 – Sheese. The slave laborers in China’s Foxconn iFactory appear to have it a lot better compare to the poor people in that Mother Jones story!