The Wall Street Journal explains why this summer was a bore
The summer of 2009 was the summer when nothing positive happened. The stock market went up but it didn’t help the economy. The classic bear market “sucker rally,” which lifted stocks by 50%, still left the Dow 5,000 points short of its all time high. In other words, those who had lost 53% of their life’s savings had now only lost 38%. Golly! Pass me another Dos Equis! Toxic assets were still on the books, mortgage refinancings slowed to a trickle, no one could get a loan to start a business. Housing starts remained at apocalyptic lows, people kept getting laid off, people kept getting furloughed. The press kept writing stories about people getting laid off and furloughed. Then journalists started getting laid off, and those that had not been laid off started writing stories about how journalists getting laid off—or furloughed—was hurting the economy because now there would be even fewer people to write stories about people who had been laid off. Or furloughed.
Read the rest (not about the economy) here.
Money talks
You don’t have to know with certainty what’s right and what’s wrong, but you can know what’s stupid. … Taxing bonuses at AIG is stupid. Anything that Congress passes in a short period of time is pretty much stupid.
-Adam Davidson, business and economics reporter at NPR
at the Nieman Conference on Narrative Journalism
on writing about business
The man, the legend, the interview: Warren Buffett
Magically, a transcription of a PBS Nightly Business Report interview with Warren Buffett ended up in my inbox and I thought it would be a great place to pull a catchy quote for a Money Talks post (which is basically my cop out when I have nothing else to write about). But halfway through the interview I realized it was way to good to pick and choose. Buffett - CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, worth about $60 billion (pre-economic collapse), and widely considered to be one of the smartest investors in the world - is truly an amazing guy.
For someone who’s life you would think revolves largely around money, he is, afterall, an investor by title, he seems so unphased by the economic climate right now.
A PBS reporter interviewed Buffett as a part of the Nightly Business Report’s 30-year anniversary special about his talks with President Obama, his optimism for the economy in the long run, and how he hasn’t altered his investing strategies since 1949, or maybe ‘50 (no, he will NOT give you investing recommendations, even if the reporter begs, which she does)
Here’s a quote to satisfy those of you who don’t like to read, the majority of the interview after the jump for those of you in the middle, and for anyone who wants the whole beast - post a comment and I’ll e-mail you the full interview.
Well the most important thing to fix right now is the economy. We have a business slowdown particularly after October 1st it was sort of on a glide path downward up til roughly October 1st and then it went into a real nosedive. In fact in September I said we were in an economic Pearl Harbor and I’ve never used that phrase before.
- Warren Buffett,
CEO, Berkshire Hathaway,
inventing new phrases.
Money talks
Think of businesses that are shutting down temporarily as a bear hibernating. They go to sleep in hopes that when they wake up, life will be better. But if summer never comes - they die.
-my economics professor,
on businesses seizing production in a loss period
Money talks
I don’t know why we’re not holding criminal charges against these people. They’ve done more to hurt the nation than Bin Laden could ever dream of.
- Robert Scheer,
Editor in Chief, Truthdig.com, a political blog,
on Henry Paulson, Secretary of the Treasury, and friends.
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