“We’re going to take a commercial break and get them out of the way, so that when something really substandard is happening, we don’t have to interrupt them.” – CNBC’s Mark Haines (right at the end of the YouTube) following the inadvertent release to a national audience of this Ron Paul summary of the historical basis for the present financial crisis.

It’s not often that I agree with the NAHB. [National Association of Home Builders] However, when I read  that they felt that financing the president’s health care initiative by reducing the value of mortgage interest and RE tax deductions could be counterproductive, I thought they had a point: WASHINGTON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Joe Robson, chairman of the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), today issued the following statement on President Obama’s proposal to reduce the value of the mortgage interest and real estate tax deductions for home buyers and home owners in order to pay for an expanded health care initiative: “With the…
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It’s Friday, and it looks like misery loves company.  China, like the United States, has a glut of vacant commercial property, and now that the Olympics are over, it looks like this could be a drag on their banks:

Wednesday’s auction also alleviates analysts’ fears that massive U.S. borrowing would deter foreign buyers from increasing their holdings in U.S. government securities. [1] Wednesday’s headline reasured with "Foreign Central Banks Snap Up Treasuries," [1] but yesterday’s Fed numbers tell a more ambiguous story. This week’s Reuters report [2] posts a marked week-over-week reduction in net buying of Treasury Debt by foreign central banks, although the number is still positive. Partially offsetting this trend was a recovery in the Agency Debt number — cenbanks managed a small net buy after last week’s moderate selloff. Agencies have been just holding their own…
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