I was listening to NPR this evening on my way home from work, and a fellow named Alistair Barnes was on talking about Wells Fargo's stunning report of a $3 bn. profit for the first quarter. He said that a large part of why Wells was able to pull this off is because when it bought Wachovia, it took on a large amount of bad loans, but the first thing it did was just write down every bad loan it picked up.Now, recently, the FASB decided, largely with a gun held to its head by Congress, to ch... Read Full Story

...we can give Barack Obama a break.From The Economist:Worse, some are wondering how well the relatively inexperienced Mr Obama would fare with a full-blown crisis given his wobbles over a minor issue such as bonuses.Because, you know, the Financial Crisis isn't a full-blown crisis. He certainly didn't enter into office in the middle of a full-blown crisis. Noooo. From their article on his inauguration:The American presidency is always the world’s hardest and most consequential job, b... Read Full Story

There's an interesting article over at the Economist on the wisdom of investing in gold right now over equities. You can find it here. The graph is disarmingly simple. It simply shows the ratio of the Dow to the gold price since 1920. As can be seen, there have been three clear peaks in this ratio: in 1929, in the mid-1960s and in 2000. And it also shows three lows: in the early 1920s, in the 1930s after the crash and around the time of gold’s record high (in real terms) in 1979-1980. At ... Read Full Story

I wrote the following this evening as a discussion post for my "History of the United States before 1877" class. Our reading this week was primarily on Columbus, and more broadly on the early, pre-British European colonization of the Americas. Read Full Story

There's been a lot of dissection, recently, of the whole Geithner/Killefer/Daschle...thing.Here's my quick opinion.In any other administration, these would have been no-brainer confirmations. The tax thing wouldn't even be on the radar.Some people are accusing Obama of being inexperienced and naive for nominating potentially the most go-to guy on healthcare in America today for a healthcare post, an experienced efficiency executive to clean up government waste, and the guy who han... Read Full Story

Heh.I was reading my Consumer Behavior textbook today, and low and behold, look what I came across in the chapter on culture:A symbol is something (a word, image, or object) that stands for or signifies somethingelse (the desired cultural meaning). We tend to think about symbols as havingan inherent meaning that resides in the symbol, forgetting that people in a cultureimbue symbols with meaning through their collective actions. For example,the swastika is most commonly thought of as a symbol... Read Full Story

So, I came up with a wonderful analogy on the fly tonight about our economic situation.I was talking about weather derivatives, and how they're pretty much like gambling, and my friend noted how the investment banks taking the profits and building skyscrapers was kind of like bookies taking the profits and building a brothel. To which I said:"Yeah, but it's more like the bookie took your money and built the brothel with it. And then you said 'But, if you built the brothel wit... Read Full Story

How I Met Your Mother Season 3 A clean apartment Trader Joe’s Sleeping in clean sheets and blankets The look my cat Punk gets when he sees a bird on the fence outside Read Full Story

This is an interesting article about how the Democrats are shoving into the stimulus bill a couple of protectionist items, like only buying steel from American steel companies, and only using American tech firms for the conversion of medical records to a fully digital system. Find me an IT firm that's big enough to handle that job that is purely American.I largely support the stimulus package. I think it's kind of senseless to argue, at this point, how many cents on the dollar we'... Read Full Story

Awesome national parks like the USS Pompanito  Great public transportation to get to them The great new Thai restaurant we found near our house Boudin Bakery The way that my wife’s tongue sticks out when I squeeze her nose Read Full Story