Weekend Reads
- The Most Dangerous Man in America: Jamie Dimon – Baseline Scenario
- Top Fed Official Wants to Break Up TBTF Banks, Eliminate Moral Hazard – HuffPo
- Jim Grant vs. David Rosenberg on Bonds – Zero Hedge
- Time to Rebalance – The Economist
- Genesis of Gold-Tungsten – Zero Hedge
- Two Versions of Reality – Financial Armageddon
On a side note, I could use some help with a research issue if anyone wants to take a crack at it. I’m working on a piece that quantifies the harm easy money does, specifically to retirees and other savers. What I can’t find is the answer to this question: How big is the U.S. CD market? With rates down from an average of 5% to 1.5%, retired folk are getting crushed.
I’ve got data on total savings, total FDIC-insured deposits, etc. But I can’t find how big the damn CD market is, anywhere. Any ideas?
Here’s one of the charts I may end up using. It shows total real estate loans (blue), total savings (red), and historic CD rates (green, right y-axis).
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William Black: “If The Obama Administration Continues This Way, It’s Going To Have A Record Disaster At The Mid-term Elections”
In this must watch Real News Network interview with William Black, the outspoken critic of all that is wrong and broken with the current system spares no words to once again denounce the (purposeful) ineffectiveness of the administration, and rightfully predicts that with Obama’s current track record of inactivity in dealing with the corruption and criminality at the nexus of finance and politics, there will be a massive loss for Democrats at the upcoming mid-term elections. In Black’s words: “We knew as soon as we saw Summers and Geithner that the finance side of the administration would be a disaster, but we hoped that political side would be preeminent and say a) this is substantively wrong to continue get in bed with finance and b) it’s terrible politics. The democratic party will be crushed if it does this. The political side has failed to get involved. This is one of those rare things where doing the right thing is really good politics, so support candidates that will actually do the right thing. And if the Obama administration continues this way, it’s going to have a record disaster at the mid-term elections. There’s going to be a massive loss of democratic seats.”
http://tinyurl.com/y9bn7qq
I wonder how much we could reduce healthcare costs, if we reduced this nonsense….
Pfizer Caught Illegally Marketing Bextra, Feds Won’t Prosecute Because “Pfizer Too Big To Nail”
CNN Health has an interesting article detailing illegal marketing practices at Pfizer. However, government officials looked the other way because Pfizer too big to nail.
Internal company documents show that Pfizer and Pharmacia (which Pfizer later bought) used a multimillion-dollar medical education budget to pay hundreds of doctors as speakers and consultants to tout Bextra.
Pfizer said in court that “the company’s intent was pure”: to foster a legal exchange of scientific information among doctors.
But an internal marketing plan called for training physicians “to serve as public relations spokespeople.”
According to Lewis Morris, chief counsel to the inspector general at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “They pushed the envelope so far past any reasonable interpretation of the law that it’s simply outrageous.”
http://tinyurl.com/yz96uk3
Freedom Watch – Gerald Celente – Rise of a Third Party
http://tinyurl.com/y9ggkfa