The Sunshine Report

Archive: Aug 2008

1. LUNCHTIME TALK: “IF I LIVE 1,000 YEARS I WILL NEVER UNDERSTAND THAT ACCOUNTING RULE! IT’S DISHONEST!”" rel="bookmark">LUNCHTIME TALK: “IF I LIVE 1,000 YEARS I WILL NEVER UNDERSTAND THAT ACCOUNTING RULE! IT’S DISHONEST!”

   1 Post on August 27, 2008

   Last week I had lunch with Marty Schiff­man who told me that “If I live 1,000 years, I will never under­stand that account­ing rule! It’s dis­hon­est!” Marty was, of course, talk­ing about the appli­ca­tion of mark to mar­ket account­ing rules by major finan­cial insti­tu­tions. Marty Schiff­man is not the “aver­age” man on the street; he […] [read full story]

   Posted in: Accounting, BANKS, Confidence, Credit Crisis, FAS 157, FAS 159, FASB, Regulatory Reform

2. SOUNDS LIKE A HOOVER ADMINISTRATION ECONOMIST PRESENTED AT LAST WEEK’S FED CONFERENCE" rel="bookmark">SOUNDS LIKE A HOOVER ADMINISTRATION ECONOMIST PRESENTED AT LAST WEEK’S FED CONFERENCE

   2 Post on August 24, 2008

   Some of the head­lines from last week’s Fed­eral Reserve con­fer­ence sounded like they were writ­ten in the 1930’s when the Hoover Admin­is­tra­tion encour­aged liq­ui­da­tion of assets and banks as a way to fix the econ­omy. Willem Buiter, a for­mer offi­cial of the Bank of Eng­land and Euro­pean Bank for Recon­struc­tion and Devel­op­ment, sounded like Andrew […] [read full story]

   Posted in: Andrew Mellon, BANKS, Bernanke, Bush Administration, Credit Crisis, Federal Funds Rate, Federal Reserve, Finance, Great Depression, Hoover Adminstration, housing crisis, monetary policy, Money Supply, Willem Buiter

3. MONEY SUPPLY AND ECONOMIC DATA WEEKLY WATCH – THE FED’S FAVORITE BIRD REMAINS THE HAWK AND PROMINENT ECONOMISTS MAKE UP DATA THAT DOESN’T EXIST" rel="bookmark">MONEY SUPPLY AND ECONOMIC DATA WEEKLY WATCH – THE FED’S FAVORITE BIRD REMAINS THE HAWK AND PROMINENT ECONOMISTS MAKE UP DATA THAT DOESN’T EXIST

   1 Post on

   Money Sup­ply For the week end­ing August 11TH, money sup­ply grew by $7.0 bil­lion to $7,728.1 bil­lion (as mea­sured by M2 on a sea­son­ally adjusted basis). Since the week end­ing March 24th sea­son­ally adjusted M2 has only increased by approx­i­mately 0.35% which means that M2 con­tin­ues to grow at a rate of less than 1% […] [read full story]

   Posted in: BANKS, Bernanke, Deflation, Federal Reserve, Finance, GDP, Inflation, M2, M3, monetary policy, Money Supply

4. MAN IN THE STREET: WHY NOT PROSECUTE CEO’S?" rel="bookmark">MAN IN THE STREET: WHY NOT PROSECUTE CEO’S?

   0 Post on August 19, 2008

   This morn­ing I was a guest on FOX Busi­ness Net­work. FOX pro­vided a car and dri­ver to take me to the stu­dio. The dri­ver imme­di­ately started quizzing me on what I was going to talk about on tele­vi­sion. When I told him I would dis­cuss bank­ing and pub­lic mar­kets and that I am a for­mer […] [read full story]

   Posted in: Cox, Credit Crisis, Disclosure, Finance, FOX BUSINESS NETWORK, SEC

5. MONEY SUPPLY AND ECONOMIC DATA WEEKLY WATCH – ANOTHER WEEK OF HAWKISH MONETARY POLICY" rel="bookmark">MONEY SUPPLY AND ECONOMIC DATA WEEKLY WATCH – ANOTHER WEEK OF HAWKISH MONETARY POLICY

   1 Post on August 17, 2008

   For the week end­ing August 4th, money sup­ply shrank to $7,720.7 bil­lion (as mea­sured by M2 on a sea­son­ally adjusted basis) which was approx­i­mately a $9 bil­lion decline in money sup­ply. Since the week end­ing March 24th sea­son­ally adjusted M2 has only increased by approx­i­mately 0.25% which means that it is grow­ing at a rate […] [read full story]

   Posted in: Bernanke, Federal Funds Rate, Federal Reserve, Finance, Inflation, monetary policy, Money Supply

6. YODA AND MILTON FRIEDMAN – TWO TIMELESS CRUSADERS AGAINST THE DARK SIDE" rel="bookmark">YODA AND MILTON FRIEDMAN – TWO TIMELESS CRUSADERS AGAINST THE DARK SIDE

   5 Post on

   25 years ago Mil­ton Fried­man was an eco­nomic Yoda teach­ing that money sup­ply was an ever present “Force” con­trol­ling the econ­omy. With a new finan­cial Death Star threat­en­ing, Fried­man is remem­bered by the Fed­eral Reserve’ Jedi Knights of money sup­ply. Before his death, Mas­ter Fried­man was the “mon­e­tarists” leader. He taught that money sup­ply deter­mines […] [read full story]

   Posted in: BANKS, Bernanke, Credit Crisis, Deflation, Federal Reserve, Finance, GDP, Inflation, Milton Friedman, monetary policy, Money Supply

7. WHAT A DIFFERENCE A YEAR MAKES! – AUGUST 13, 2007 INTERVIEW ON CNBC WITH MARIA BARTIROMA" rel="bookmark">WHAT A DIFFERENCE A YEAR MAKES! – AUGUST 13, 2007 INTERVIEW ON CNBC WITH MARIA BARTIROMA

   0 Post on August 13, 2008

   It was a year ago that I appeared on CNBC and was inter­viewed by Maria Bar­tiroma. I dis­cussed the state of the bank­ing and credit mar­kets and the future direc­tion the U.S. econ­omy. After the inter­view I received e-mails and tele­phone calls telling me I was crazy and needed to “get real” about the future. […] [read full story]

   Posted in: BANKS, Bernanke, CNBC, Credit Crisis, Federal Reserve, Finance, monetary policy

8. THE BRITISH BANKERS’ ASSOCIATION RESPONSE TO “LIBOR NEEDS TO BE DUMPED NOW”" rel="bookmark">THE BRITISH BANKERS’ ASSOCIATION RESPONSE TO “LIBOR NEEDS TO BE DUMPED NOW”

   0 Post on

   Brian Mairs of the British Bankers’ Asso­ci­a­tion (the “BBA”) appears to have responded to my recent blog arti­cle about LIBOR by post­ing a com­ment. I can­not con­firm that the posted com­ment was writ­ten by Mr. Mairs, but based upon blog track­ing soft­ware I believe that the com­ment was posted by some­one at the BBA and […] [read full story]

   Posted in: British Bankers Association, Finance, LIBOR

9. LIBOR NEEDS TO BE DUMPED NOW" rel="bookmark">LIBOR NEEDS TO BE DUMPED NOW

   1 Post on August 11, 2008

   I am a critic of LIBOR’s use as a US bench­mark inter­est rate. With more than $350 tril­lion of out­stand­ing LIBOR indexed debt, a small error in LIBOR has a mas­sive dis­tort­ing effect on col­lec­tive bor­rower inter­est expense. US bor­row­ers are being over­charged because LIBOR over­states what it is intended to mea­sure. LIBOR has two […] [read full story]

   Posted in: BANKS, Federal Funds Rate, Finance, LIBOR, Wall Street Journal

10. ECONOMISTS NEED TO CHECK FACTS BEFORE SPEAKING OUT — THE FED IS DOING A GREAT JOB" rel="bookmark">ECONOMISTS NEED TO CHECK FACTS BEFORE SPEAKING OUT — THE FED IS DOING A GREAT JOB

    2 Post on August 9, 2008

    Many “econ­o­mists” spent the last 9 months scream­ing that the Fed­eral Reserve’s inter­est rate pol­icy was going to ignite run­away infla­tion. These talk­ing heads were so inter­ested in lis­ten­ing to them­selves that they for­got to check the data and see whether Fed­eral Reserve pol­icy was infla­tion­ary or not.  As it turns out, since the mid­dle of […] [read full story]

    Posted in: Bernanke, Federal Funds Rate, Federal Reserve, Finance, FOX BUSINESS NETWORK, Inflation, Jenna Lee, monetary policy, Money Supply