The US government’s ability to shock has apparently gone out the window. Yesterday, Hammerin’ Hank Paulson recanted on the central purpose of the Troubled Asset Recovery Plan (TARP): using $700bn (actually, up to an unlimited amount of money in theory, since the plan calls for $700bn to be held at any one time) to buy, [Read more...]
California could be on the brink of an economic crisis, according to the LA Times. The paper is reporting that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has warned Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson that his state may soon need a US$7.0 billion emergency loan from the federal government to meet payments to state entities such as schools.
The LA Times [Read more...]
Wow, what a week. Not that markets ended up moving much, mind: as others have noticed, everything in the US closed pretty much where it opened the previous week (see Barry Ritholtz’s post on the subject). But even if those indicators indicate that nothing has changed, it is pretty clear that everything has changed. And [Read more...]