Too Big To Fail: The Big Bank Lie

About a year ago, when it looked like the world was about to end and the economies of countries around the world were beginning to melt away like a Salvador Dali painting, the leaders of the U.S. government, i.e. President Bush and Treasury Secretary Paulson told us that we had only days, maybe only minutes, [...]

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How Much Is Your House Really Worth?

It seems like such an easy question: how much is my house worth? The problem is that this is not an easy question – and that fact that that is a problem is the real problem.  Let me explain…
A long time ago, when Tricky Dick Nixon was President of the United States, our country was [...]

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So What Else Is Too Big To Fail?

I would guess that, prior to the recent World Economic Meltdown (WEM), most of us never gave much thought to which industries were “too big to fail”.  Who knew we couldn’t live without AIG or Bank of America?  Insurance companies and banks come and go, right?  It turns out that this rule only applies to [...]

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Vampire Banks Come Back to Life

Paul Krugman, the Nobel prize winning economist, is fond of using the term “Zombie banks” to describe banks that are operating despite having liabilities that exceed their assets.  Most of our major banks have fallen into this category – the living dead.  However, it seems that the situation is changing with the Obama/Geithner rescue plan [...]

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AIG:Too Big to Fail – Too Big to Exist

If you bought AIG stock about ten days ago, you could have quadrupled your money by today.  It doesn’t make much sense, does it?  Why are people buying AIG while the U.S. Congress sounds like they are about to eat AIG for lunch?  There is either some serious irrational exuberance going on among investors or [...]

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