A Yale law professor looks at the  Continental Ill. bank bailout versus the Bear Stearns bailout. The differences are important.   FDIC was never created to save brokers but commercial banks.  Should they?  The prof suggest what will result, a round of mergers to get firms on Wall Street ‘too big to fail’ knowing the…

ogBNSF has parked hundreds of container rail cars.   Transportation is the first to show a slowdown.  I suspect this will impact on the speed of the developmetn of the Dallas Logistics Hub.  Slowing economy means a less freight to haul. 

In the classic Americana song The Class of ’57 the Oak Ridge Boys opine that one of their class members ended up selling insurance and ‘part time real estate.’  Think about that. Back then one sold real estate part time. The reason was that not enough activity occurred to make it a full time profession.…

Ad revenue for newspaper dropped sharply this past quarter.   The winner, web based advertising. But I wonder, do you click on banner ads, I don’t.  Anyway, while one quarter may not sound bad but this has been going on for years and years.  The very future of big papers is in doubt quite frankly.…

Hre is a link to another Professor Blog.   Perhaps this professor blogging thing is catching on!

Switzerland with only 7.5 M people has a reputation that belies its small size.  Read this article about how they did it. DFW by the way has about 6 M people.

Classic lows in consumer confidence relate to recesions.   No surprise in that!  And no surprise that they bring changes at the White House.  Markets are all about psychlogy.  Candidates are all about, like markets, hope fear and gree.  Frankly I don’t thnk a majority is for any of the current three Presidential candidates as…

Here is an article on the author of The Black Swan.  Nassim Taleb writes that Wall Street models for risk are faulty. He argues for the presence of so called Black Swans, irregular unexpected events which do not fit math models.  We are discussin options in Intermed II.  This is an excellent article exploring the…

James Cayne, Bear Stearns Chairman, sold $61.3 M in stock this week.   He and his wife waited until the price rose from $02 to $10+.  He remains Chairman. Question, why isn’t he required to put that money back in the pot for the employees, investors, or the FED that is rescuing the firm. It…

As the saying goes, follow the money. Out with the Aluminum siding salesman and the railroad engineer as Treasury Secretaries. In with Hank Paulson, former Goldman Sachs bigwig.  Memo, Presidents come and go, Goldman is always in the White House, Rubin was from Goldman.  Now remember, the Glass Stegall Act forbidding banks to engage in…