The Sunshine Report

Category Archive: economy

1. Let’s Do The Time Warp Again; Advocates of a 4.5% Mortgage Rate Must Have Come From Another Time And Place

   2 Post on February 8, 2009

   When I hear peo­ple talk about the gov­ern­ment essen­tially man­dat­ing that banks and Fred­die Mac and Fan­nie Mae orig­i­nate 4.5% 30 year fixed mort­gages I think of the Rocky Hor­ror Pic­ture Show and The Time Warp. Mem­bers of Con­gress and econ­o­mists who are push­ing under­priced mort­gages must be from another time and place oth­er­wise they […] [read full story]

   Posted in: BANKS, Bush Administration, Business Environment, Credit Crisis, economy, Fannie Mae, Finance, Freddie Mac, housing crisis, Mortgage, Obama, Politics, Public Policy, REGULATION

2. This Week’s Las Vegas Capital Markets Conference Holds The Key To Restarting The Economy

   2 Post on

     Start­ing Sun­day, the rem­nants of the secu­ri­ti­za­tion indus­try will be at the annual Amer­i­can Secu­ri­ti­za­tion Forum (“ASF”) Con­fer­ence in Las Vegas. Just as the secu­ri­ti­za­tion and secu­ri­ties indus­try led the nation into the cur­rent cri­sis, if the econ­omy is going to revive itself, this indus­try needs to lead the finan­cial sec­tor out of the […] [read full story]

   Posted in: BANKS, Credit Crisis, Economic Statistics, economy, Finance, Freddie Mac, Manufacturing, Obama, Politics, Public Policy, Securitization

3. Be Careful What You Wish For –Chinese Currency Revaluation May Hurt America

   1 Post on February 3, 2009

   There is mount­ing evi­dence that a freely float­ing Chi­nese cur­rency will actu­ally drop in value and make Chi­nese exports cheaper. In his con­fir­ma­tion hear­ings, Tim Gei­th­ner espoused the U.S. “Con­ven­tional Wis­dom” that China is an unfair trade com­peti­tor because it manip­u­lates its cur­rency down in value so that its exports are arti­fi­cially cheap. The Con­ven­tional […] [read full story]

   Posted in: Asia, China, economy, Finance, Manufacturing, Politics, Public Policy, Timothy Geithner, Trade

4. Why Can’t We Learn From History? A Joint Post by Mark Sunshine and Ira Artman

   1 Post on February 1, 2009

   In 1998 the cur­rent bank­ing cri­sis was both pre­dictable and pre­dicted by Con­gres­sional lead­ers and a future Comp­trol­ler of the Cur­rency. In April, 1998 the House Com­mit­tee on Bank­ing & Finan­cial Ser­vices held hear­ings where “lessons” from the 1980s bank and thrift cri­sis were dis­cussed and fears of indus­try con­sol­i­da­tion were expressed. Hear­ings tran­scripts clearly […] [read full story]

   Posted in: BANKS, Credit Crisis, economy, Finance, Ira Artman, Obama, Politics, Public Policy, REGULATION

5. Sunshine’s Travel Log Blog — The Chinese Economic Miracle May Be Unraveling

   0 Post on January 23, 2009

     The Chi­nese eco­nomic mir­a­cle appears to be unrav­el­ing at an alarm­ing and accel­er­at­ing pace. In just 30 years, China was able to trans­form its econ­omy from a Marx­ist bas­ket case to a global man­u­fac­tur­ing pow­er­house. But recent reports of mas­sive plant clos­ings, sky­rock­et­ing unem­ploy­ment, plung­ing exports and grow­ing social unrest are rais­ing seri­ous ques­tions about […] [read full story]

   Posted in: Asia, China, economy, Finance, Politics, Trade, Trade Finance, Travel Log

6. Sunshine’s Travel Log Blog – Day 6 and 7, Humans for export!

   1 Post on January 20, 2009

   The next stop on my trek through Asia was to The Philip­pines. First Cap­i­tal has a grow­ing and vibrant office in Manila that does var­i­ous account­ing and trans­ac­tion pro­cess­ing func­tions for the rest of the com­pany. Sur­pris­ingly, the largest export prod­uct for The Philip­pines is humans. The export of young and tal­ented work­ers who send […] [read full story]

   Posted in: Asia, economy, Finance, Politics, The Philippines, Travel Log

7. Sunshine’s Travel Log Blog – Day 5– The Land of Mao

   0 Post on January 14, 2009

   Around noon­time on Sun­day, I arrived in Bei­jing.  After check­ing into the hotel, I decided to get some lunch where I was given today’s edi­tion of China Daily, a.k.a., “The National Eng­lish Lan­guage News­pa­per,” estab­lished by the Com­mu­nist Party in the 1980’s.  Accord­ing to the China Daily web site, it is the most author­i­ta­tive and […] [read full story]

   Posted in: China, economy, Finance, Politics, Public Policy, Trade

8. Financial Crisis and Reform – A Guest Blog By Marshall Sonenshine

   0 Post on January 13, 2009

   About a month ago Mar­shall Sonen­shine deliv­ered pre­pared remarks at the Har­vard Law School Lead­er­ship Con­fer­ence. Below are excerpts of Marshall’s words, all of which I agree with and believe deserve a wide audi­ence and dis­cus­sion. As an intro­duc­tion to Marshall’s text and so every­one has full trans­parency and dis­clo­sure, I think it is impor­tant […] [read full story]

   Posted in: BANKS, Credit Crisis, Credit Default Swaps, economy, Finance, Marshall Sonenshine, Politics, Public Policy, REGULATION, Regulatory Reform

9. Sunshine’s Travel Log Blog: Day 1 – The 8% Mantra

   2 Post on January 10, 2009

   8% is the magic num­ber for China and every­one that I met today in Hong Kong knew it. Con­ven­tional wis­dom is that if the econ­omy grows by 8% in 2009 all will be well for the Peo­ples Repub­lic of China. The crash­ing export sec­tor won’t be a prob­lem. Tens of thou­sands of busi­ness fail­ures won’t […] [read full story]

   Posted in: BANKS, China, Economic Statistics, economy, Finance, Politics, Trade, Travel Log

10. Sunshine’s Travel Log Blog: Day 0 – Off To Hong Kong

    0 Post on January 6, 2009

    I am trav­el­ing in Asia until Thurs­day, Jan­u­ary 22nd and while I am there Sun­shine Notes is con­vert­ing to the Sun­shine Travel Log Blog! When­ever pos­si­ble I will write about the trip. Some of the travel log blogs will relate to finance and busi­ness; while oth­ers will hope­fully just be fun. But, before we start the […] [read full story]

    Posted in: China, Economic Statistics, economy, Finance, Hong Kong, Politics, Travel Log