BankTracker: Interactive website from AMU School of Communication Provides bank-specific troubled asset ratios (where lower is better) based on comparison of troubled assets (e.g., loans over 90 days past due adjusted for Federal guarantees ) to Tier One Capital plus Loan Loss Reserves. The ratio does not include risk from non-loan assets (e.g., CDO, CDS). It appears to correlate well with the Unofficial Problem Bank List compiled by Calculated Risk.
Forbes.com Video: Nouriel Roubini on Financial Sector One Year Post-LehmanWorth a listen. He’s one of the few who correctly forecast the financial sector meltdown (and endured a lot of ridicule for his efforts).
More on the Dark Ages of Macro from a Canadian Economist
From the CBO Director's blog: No, Joe, illegal immigrants are not covered under the Baucus bill. But it doesn’t mean that they won’t receive care if enforcement is lax (or just or ethical or fair or compassionate).
From nakedcapitalism blog (no, it's not naked capitalists), a very funny photo...
Courtesy of Exelon Corp: Calculate whether or not it would pay to switch from oil to gas
The Economist: The Bachelet Model Chile’s popular female president, Michelle Bachelet: “while sticking to fiscal rigour (at some political cost), she opted to make social protection and the promotion of equality of opportunity her main priority. Her government is building 3,500 crèches for poorer children. It has introduced a universal minimum state pension and extended free health care to cover many serious conditions. Its housing policy features better-quality homes, in model neighbourhoods. But its efforts to shake up education have been disappointingly timid.”
And from another Economist article on Chile: “Under the Concertación, Chile has been the region’s big success story, adding an increasingly robust democracy and welfare provision to the free-market economic policies bequeathed by Pinochet. In the 20 years to 2006, the poverty rate fell from 45% of the population to just 13.7%. Income distribution remains highly unequal but opportunities are widening. Eight out of ten youths now finish secondary school. Four out of ten go on to higher education and of these 70% are the first in their families to do so, in many cases thanks to government-backed grants or loans, points out Mr Velasco.” It goes on to suggest that all is not well as growth bumps up against old regulations and institutions as well as entrenched interest groups. But Bachelet still deserves a lot of credit for overseeing growth and reducing disparities in opportunity, income, and well-being.
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