Elsewhere this morning,
- Cost of bailing out Wall Street: 3% GDP. Cost of bailing out Fannie & Freddie: 10% of GDP.
- “A yield of 7.9% over 10 years is expensive capital indeed for a bank which is (a) profitable, (b) currently well capitalized, and (c) doesn’t have an obvious stock of loans needing to be written down… something very unusual does seem to be going on.”
- Apple now bigger than Citi.
- The IMF launches a financial rescue plan- for itself.
- Spitzerism lives!
- Irony du jour: Moody’s CDO training. Hurry. Space Limited.
- “Before Congress races to impose new regulations or change the regulatory structure, it is imperative the Congress conduct a vigorous debate on the merits of the Fed’s intervention.”
- “Josh Birnbaum, one of the traders who led Goldman’s push into bets against subprime mortgage bonds, has left the firm and plans to form a $1 billion hedge fund.”
- Hedge funds hoard cash.
- Wealth porn.
- Shedding light on food price movements: commodity arbitrage.
- “Lindsay Renwick, the mayor of this dusty southern Australian town, remembers the constant whir of the rice mill. “It was our little heartbeat out there, tickety-tick-tickety.”
- The impact of market turmoil on big pension funds.
- Credit crisis lessons from Japan.
- Magazine covers as lead indicators.
- If the Editor of the Economist was a communist, Silvio Berlusconi would be a…?
- Women give out email passwords for chocolate.
- No Kidding.
- Grass. Other side. Greener.