New, Innovative Intellectual Leadership.

Where would we be without the Massachusetts state Democratic Party? Now they want to tax dogs.

I know, I know, you're saying: "that's not true, Ellisblog is spinning the news." Read it again.

The Banking Crisis, Act Two, Scene One.

Last year (and the year before) focused our attention on ever larger number of defaults in the sub-prime mortgage market, which then laid waste to various securitzed exotica, which thus rendered our major banking institutions and non-bank banks insolvent. Roughly speaking.

If you live in New York, as I do, and hang out with Wall Street traders, as I sometimes do, you have been told for well over a year now: "you think subprime was bad, wait until the Commercial Real Estate (CRE) market begins to fall apart."

Wait no more!

Missile Defense in Eastern Europe.

I wonder what the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff think? From The Financial Times:

“Those who say we are scrapping missile defence in Europe are either misinformed or misrepresenting the reality of what we are doing in Europe,” said Robert Gates, US defence secretary. The new approach would be more effective than the previous plan, which he recommended to former President George W. Bush three years ago.

A Blast of Common Sense.

The case involved $3.6 billion in bonuses that were paid by Merrill Lynch late last year, just as that firm was about to be merged with Bank of America. Neither company provided details of the bonuses to their shareholders, who voted on Dec. 5 to approve the merger.

The judge focused much of his criticism on the fact that the fine in the case would be paid by the bank’s shareholders, who were the ones that were supposed to have been injured by the lack of disclosure.

“It is quite something else for the very management that is accused of having lied to its shareholders to determine how much of those victims’ money should be used to make the case against the management go away,” the judge wrote.

--- from a story on The New York Times website.