The Sunshine Report

Category Archive: Finance

1. The Hyper-Inflation Myth

   4 Post on September 1, 2009

   Con­ven­tional wis­dom is that the Fed’s print­ing presses are run­ning over­time and the econ­omy is awash with liq­uid­ity.  Just yes­ter­day the National Asso­ci­a­tion for Busi­ness Eco­nom­ics reported that almost half the econ­o­mists they sur­veyed believed that Fed­eral Reserve Pol­icy is infla­tion­ary.  Too bad the NABE sur­veyed econ­o­mists and con­ven­tional wis­dom are wrong. Econ­o­mists, pun­dits and jour­nal­ists […] [read full story]

   Posted in: BANKS, Economic Statistics, economy, Federal Reserve, Finance, Inflation, monetary policy, Money Supply

2. When Things Got Tough Hank Paulson Went Skiing

   3 Post on July 18, 2009

   Hank Paul­son said the unimag­in­able last week. He tes­ti­fied that he was off on ski­ing when he had his famous tele­phone call with Ken Lewis where he strong armed Lewis and Bank of Amer­ica to com­plete the acqui­si­tion of Mer­rill Lynch. Lewis had pre­vi­ously tes­ti­fied that he thought that Paul­son was on a bike ride […] [read full story]

   Posted in: Credit Crisis, economy, Executive Fitness, Finance, Politics, Public Policy

3. Small Business Lending Programs Aren’t Working and Need To Change

   3 Post on

   Pro­grams to get small busi­ness lend­ing mov­ing aren’t work­ing. Instead of a resur­gence of small busi­ness lend­ing the sit­u­a­tion is get­ting worse. Last week the Wall Street Jour­nal reported that the White House was search­ing for ways to help small busi­ness by unlock­ing frozen credit. This week CIT, the largest small busi­ness lender in the U.S., […] [read full story]

   Posted in: Credit Crisis, economy, Finance, Obama, Politics, Public Policy, Robert Blum, Small Business Lending

4. Sunshine Notes Turns 50,000 and Expands To Radio

   1 Post on June 21, 2009

     That’s right, this week­end Sun­shine Notes will have had 50,000 read­ers log onto its site over the last 12 months and read one or more arti­cles. And, next Sat­ur­day at 12 PM EST the Sun­shine Report will debut on Boston AM 1510 “The Zone” and the World Wide Web at 1510thezone.com. The Sun­shine Report […] [read full story]

   Posted in: Finance

5. Government Accountability Is The Key To Banking Overhaul

   0 Post on

   The prob­lem with the bank­ing reg­u­la­tory sys­tem that needs to be fixed is that reg­u­la­tors aren’t held respon­si­ble when they do a bad job. Obama’s focus on new leg­is­la­tion doesn’t do a lot to pro­mote gov­ern­ment account­abil­ity and takes the spot­light off lead­er­ship prob­lems that exist within the var­i­ous reg­u­la­tory agen­cies. The Obama leg­isla­tive pro­pos­als […] [read full story]

   Posted in: Alan Greenspan, BANKS, economy, Finance, Politics, Public Policy, REGULATION, Regulatory Reform

6. The New Supersized Fed

   1 Post on June 16, 2009

   Fed watch­ers need to stop pan­ick­ing when they look at the new super­sized Fed bal­ance sheet and mon­e­tary base. The Fed’s bal­ance sheet doesn’t nec­es­sar­ily mean run­away infla­tion is in our future or that the Fed is out of con­trol. The Fed got super­sized because Bernanke & Com­pany came to appre­ci­ate the U.S.‘s spe­cial role […] [read full story]

   Posted in: Bernanke, economy, Excess Reserves, Federal Reserve, Finance, monetary policy, Money Supply, Politics, Public Policy

7. What If The Fed’s Isn’t Printing Money Like A Drunken Sailor?

   1 Post on June 12, 2009

   What if con­ven­tional wis­dom about the Fed is wrong and it isn’t print­ing money like a drunken sailor? Well…that would make most of the media cov­er­age of the bond mar­ket and the econ­omy wildly off the mark. As it turns out while media talk­ing heads were rant­ing about how the Fed was run­ning their print­ing presses […] [read full story]

   Posted in: Bernanke, Brad Setser, Economic Statistics, Federal Reserve, Finance, M1, M2, M3, monetary policy, Money Supply, Politics, Public Policy

8. Bank Employee Compensation: Financial Journalists Meet Aesop’s Fables

   2 Post on June 11, 2009

   Two nights ago I was watch­ing busi­ness TV news when one of the jour­nal­ists started explain­ing to view­ers why the Obama admin­is­tra­tion shouldn’t reg­u­late bank employee com­pen­sa­tion. I haven’t been able to get the jour­nal­ists com­ments out of my mind since the show. And, I keep on think­ing of the moral of an Aesop fable […] [read full story]

   Posted in: Bank Compensation, BANKS, Finance, Public Policy, REGULATION, Regulatory Reform

9. II" rel="bookmark">Don’t Worry About The Debt Tsunami Part II

   0 Post on June 8, 2009

   Last week I wrote that the for­ward cal­en­dar of to-be-issued gov­ern­ment and mort­gage related debt isn’t going to swamp the econ­omy. Since I wrote my arti­cle Paul Krug­man wrote an arti­cle cit­ing research done by Brad Setser that sup­ports my the­sis. Setser’s analy­sis pre­dates my arti­cle and is really high qual­ity work. I am cer­tain that […] [read full story]

   Posted in: Brad Setser, economy, Finance, Fiscal Policy, Paul Krugman, Public Policy, Savings Rate

10. Don’t Worry About The Debt Tsunami

    1 Post on June 4, 2009

    It looks like in the next few years newly issued Trea­sury and agency guar­an­teed res­i­den­tial mort­gage debt may cre­ate a debt tsunami that will swamp the econ­omy. For­tu­nately, looks can be deceiv­ing. While inter­est rates are likely to rise for both long matu­rity Trea­sury notes and bonds and agency guar­an­teed res­i­den­tial mort­gage debt, ris­ing rates […] [read full story]

    Posted in: Credit Crisis, Economic Statistics, economy, Federal Reserve, Finance, monetary policy, Money Supply, Public Policy