The Sunshine Report

Category Archive: Finance

1. AIG Training Manual" rel="bookmark">Credit Default Swap Math As Explained In The AIG Training Manual

   4 Post on March 2, 2009

   I just found the secret to under­stand­ing AIG’s finan­cials.  Just watch the video below.  Is is a MUST for Trea­sury Offi­cials so that they can fig­ure out why we are putting so much money in AIG.    [flv:mtm.flv 325 255]       [read full story]

   Posted in: AIG, Credit Crisis, Credit Default Swaps, economy, Finance, Politics, Public Policy

2. GM Vehicle." rel="bookmark">Am I A Masochist? Another Try At Buying A GM Vehicle.

   11 Post on February 27, 2009

   Unex­pect­edly, my wife and I are back in the mar­ket for another new car and we are try­ing again to buy a GM vehi­cle. Unfor­tu­nately, just like last month we can’t seem to pull it off. We want to buy a Cadil­lac CTS but we can’t get a dealer to honor their adver­tised price. Some­times […] [read full story]

   Posted in: economy, Finance, GM, Politics

3. Create Jobs Quickly By Capitalizing Small Business Lenders By Robert Blum

   0 Post on February 26, 2009

   In my post­ing last Fri­day with Mark Sun­shine, TARP Isn’t Work­ing For Small Busi­nesses; Two Sim­ple Solu­tions For Small Busi­ness Lend­ing, we dis­cussed the severe fund­ing stresses being faced by small and medium sized busi­ness enter­prises (“SMEs”). Unfor­tu­nately, most of the gov­ern­ment aid announced to date does not help in deploy­ing cap­i­tal to SMEs any […] [read full story]

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

4. Maybe The World Isn’t Flat Afterall – A Guest Article By Roger Fransecky, Ph.D

   0 Post on

   There is more evi­dence that the world is not flat.  Richard Florida’s arti­cle in this month’s The Atlantic on how the reces­sion will reshape the econ­omy offers a con­tentious argu­ment about the impor­tance of highly tal­ent peo­ple clus­tered in cer­tain regions: The abil­ity of dif­fer­ent cities and regions to attract highly edu­cated people—or human capital—has […] [read full story]

   Posted in: Finance, Guest Blog

5. 7 Faint Signs That The Economy’s Bottom Is In Sight

   1 Post on February 25, 2009

   There are opaque and early signs that the U.S. econ­omy has started the begin­ning of a bot­tom­ing process. Just like a div­ing sub­ma­rine needs to stop its down­ward motion and reach its low­est depth before it can resur­face, the econ­omy needs to go through the steps of slow­ing its decline and sta­bi­liz­ing before it can […] [read full story]

   Posted in: BANKS, Bernanke, CPI, Credit Crisis, Deflation, Economic Statistics, economy, Federal Reserve, Finance, Fiscal Policy, Inflation, M1, M2, monetary policy, Money Supply, Obama, Politics, Public Policy, TARP

6. If They Weren’t Stress Testing Banks What Were They Doing All These Years?

   3 Post on February 22, 2009

   It is amaz­ing that Geithner’s pro­posal to “stress test” banks is mak­ing news as new pol­icy. After all, reg­u­la­tors were sup­posed to be doing this all along. After the last bank­ing cri­sis in the 1980s bank­ing reg­u­la­tors got the author­ity to antic­i­pate cap­i­tal short­falls as well as oper­a­tional defi­cien­cies. When prob­lems are iden­ti­fied reg­u­la­tors are […] [read full story]

   Posted in: BANKS, economy, FDIC, Finance, Obama, Public Policy, REGULATION, Regulatory Reform, Timothy Geithner, Treasury

7. TARP Isn’t Working For Small Business; Two Simple Solutions To Get Small Business Lending Going Again" rel="bookmark">TARP Isn’t Working For Small Business; Two Simple Solutions To Get Small Business Lending Going Again

   3 Post on February 19, 2009

   A Joint Arti­cle By Mark Sun­shine and Robert Blum   Unfor­tu­nately, the Obama Admin­is­tra­tion isn’t propos­ing much to help restart lend­ing to small and medium sized enter­prises (“SMEs”). While SME’s make up the back­bone of the U.S. econ­omy and pro­vide most of its job cre­ation, the credit cri­sis is mak­ing them eco­nomic road kill. SME’s […] [read full story]

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

8. Regulatory Reform: Change We Can Believe In – A Guest Blog by Tom Berner

   1 Post on

   With the focus in Wash­ing­ton on bank bailouts and stim­u­lus pack­ages, we have yet to hear about any seri­ous pro­pos­als for new reg­u­la­tions. Nev­er­the­less, they will come, and any­one who thinks that a Pres­i­dent McCain would have treated Wall Street any less harshly than Pres­i­dent Obama must have been asleep dur­ing the Pres­i­den­tial cam­paign. Indeed, […] [read full story]

   Posted in: economy, Finance, Law, Politics, Public Policy, REGULATION, Regulatory Reform, Tom Berner

9. TARP 1.0 Didn’t Get Lending Going and TARP 2.0 Won’t Be Much Better" rel="bookmark">TARP 1.0 Didn’t Get Lending Going and TARP 2.0 Won’t Be Much Better

   7 Post on February 12, 2009

   TARP 1.0 didn’t get lend­ing going and TARP 2.0 won’t be much bet­ter. The prob­lem is that TARP 2.0 con­tin­ues to focus on banks as the pri­mary lend­ing insti­tu­tions despite the fact that banks aren’t the pri­mary source of non-real estate credit for con­sumers or busi­nesses. Most non-real estate lend­ing takes place through the “shadow […] [read full story]

   Posted in: BANKS, Bond Insurance, Community Development Financial Institutions Fund, Credit Crisis, economy, Finance, Fiscal Policy, Mutual Funds, Obama, Paulson, Politics, Public Policy, SBA, Timothy Geithner

10. Are You A Dog Or A Cat?

    1 Post on February 10, 2009

    Are these the best of times or the worst of times?   Do the sim­ple things in life lift your spir­its or do you strug­gle against the yoke of eco­nomic con­straint. It’s all atti­tude and per­cep­tion.   Obvi­ously this isn’t the most seri­ous arti­cle I have ever posted but on an oth­er­wise tough day I hope […] [read full story]

    Posted in: Dog/Cat, economy, Finance, Politics, Public Policy