Barry Ritholtz

 

Lots of great links today, including one on the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau’s early priorities. To which I’ll lead in which this excerpt from Rob: “Phil Hall wrote ‘Next week is the premiere of two highly anticipated endeavors: the Hollywood blockbuster ‘Captain America: The First Avenger’ and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). One of

/ Read More

 

Lots of great links today, including one on the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau’s early priorities. To which I’ll lead in which this excerpt from Rob: “Phil Hall wrote ‘Next week is the premiere of two highly anticipated endeavors: the Hollywood blockbuster ‘Captain America: The First Avenger’ and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). One of

/ Read More

 

Rates are amazing because economic news is terrible. Today’s links explore just how terrible. Plus there’s a bTunes dedication to loan agents battling rebate recapture. So click play on James Brown’s The Big Payback and read up. – Is Residential Real Estate Worse Than Depression (Ritholtz) – Will U.S. Repeat Monetary/Fiscal Mistakes of 1937? (Krugman

/ Read More

 

Awhile back I wrote that if Barry Ritholtz was a rapper, he’d be Gift of Gab from Blackalicious. His retort was that he’s all 3 Beastie Boys. I can dig that: the dude’s “got more stories than JD’s got Salinger.” So kicking off today with an inflation story originated on his blog—context for today’s PPI

/ Read More

 

This great home price chart from VisualizingEconomics (via Barry Ritholtz) speaks for itself, but below chart is a description from VisualizingEconomics clarifying whether a home seller should be looking at inflation adjusted (real) versus not inflation adjusted (nominal) prices. Click for full size. A $10,000 house in 1890 would be worth almost the same in

/ Read More

 

The National Association of Realtors reported today that existing homes sales were up 2.7% in January and up 5.3% from a year ago. Investors bought 23% of existing single family homes, condos, townhouses, and co-ops in January, and 32% of all existing home sales transactions were completed with all cash. NAR said the median existing

/ Read More

 

A new year. Typically the time for a media technique as old as media: recapping last year or predicting this year. But instead of doing that today, below I’m re-posting The Day Journalism Died, a piece I wrote in 2006. It’s not about financial media, but it reminded me what consumer financial media is and

/ Read More

 

A blog spat between TheBigPicture and ZeroHedge a few days ago is ancient history now, but seeing two heavyweights take shots at each other was rap battle-esque in its entertainment level. TheBigPicture author Ritholtz started it by asking, with his signature artisan curiousness, if ZeroHedge jumped the shark. ZeroHedge author Tyler Durden finished it, with

/ Read More

 

Homes are most people’s largest investment so it’s not surprising NYT’s most read story the past 2 days is Housing Fades As A Means To Build Wealth. It cites 5 housing experts who all have similar bearish outlooks on housing. There will always be chatter about the demise of a certain asset class, so remember

/ Read More

 

Saw this picture on Barry Ritholtz’s site which came originally from NYT. A useful diagram of Europe’s debt situation. According to NYT “Banks and governments in these five shaky economies owe each other many billions of euros (converted here to dollars) and have even larger debts to Britain, France and Germany. Arrow widths are proportional

/ Read More

 

Below is an excerpt from quant analyst and pundit Barry Ritholtz about the bailout costs. It’s highlighted in his new book Bailout Nation—the graphic is particularly alarming. It is exceedingly difficult to convey exactly how much we are spending on all these bailouts. Whenever I start talking trillions (versus mere billions), I get puzzled looks

/ Read More