The Curious Capitalist

How do we know when it's time to start getting prudent?

Justin Fox — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:24:47 +0000

As part of my frightening yet potentially lucrative new career as a Person Who Sits/Stands at the Front of the Room and Says Stuff While Other People Sit in Chairs and Listen Semi-Attentively, I'm on a panel tonight at the Barnes & Noble at Broadway and 66th in Manhattan with Bruce Bartlett, Robert Samuelson and [...]

New column: The dollar in danger

Justin Fox — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 19:35:06 +0000

My new column is up online and in the issue of TIME with our Secretary of State on the cover. It's about money.

Are finance professors to blame for the financial crisis (Part 2)?

Justin Fox — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:01:04 +0000

Titan of academic finance Gene Fama writes in his blog: The premise of the Fox book is that our current economic problems are largely due to blind acceptance of the efficient markets hypothesis (EMH), which posits that market prices reflect all available information. The claim is that the world's investors and their advisors in the financial [...]

I want my FHA! (My FHA annual actuarial study, that is)

Barbara Kiviat — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 22:48:26 +0000

There's been a lot of chatter recently about whether or not the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) is going to need a bailout. The FHA insures—but does not write—home loans, and thanks to the housing bust, the agency has had to dip a little further into its reserves than it probably would have liked to. [...]

What if the economy actually is getting better?

Justin Fox — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:44:58 +0000

Last week I greeted a couple pieces of good economic news, the reports that GDP grew 3.5% in the third quarter and house prices rose 1.2% in August, with a shrug and worries that things might be about to take a turn for the worse. So it seems only fair to point out that, this [...]

Almost $300 billion in housing aid (and only $60 billion of it for renters)

Justin Fox — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 03:19:26 +0000

The CBO has a new "economic and budget issue brief" out on one of our favorite subjects, federal support for housing. The gist: there's a lot of it. I've written about this stuff before, but this time around one factoid especially caught my attention: The CBO estimated that about $230 billion went to supporting homeownership in 2009, [...]

Do we need a czar for college tuition?

Barbara Kiviat — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 22:28:50 +0000

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports* that $50,000 is quickly becoming the typical cost for a year at one of the nation's elite colleges: Fifty-eight private colleges now charge at least that much for tuition, fees, room, and board, a Chronicle analysis of College Board data shows. Last year only five colleges did. Talk about sticker shock. [...]

Alexander Hamilton, hip-hop icon

Justin Fox — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:38:49 +0000

Really no commentary necessary, other than that I learned of it via Christopher Hayes (via a couple other people) on the Twitter:

Paul Volcker really not so hot on Glass-Steagall

Justin Fox — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 02:04:34 +0000

The FT's John Gapper heard Paul Volcker speak about financial regulation in Florida today: [H]e emphasised this afternoon that he was “not proposing a return to Glass-Steagall” because he regarded securities underwriting as “a reasonable banking function analogous to lending”. Nor did he want to bar banks from mergers and acquisitions advice. The only activities he believed [...]

In which I continue to take a stand against home-buyer tax credits

Barbara Kiviat — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 22:57:24 +0000

Well, it looks like we could be getting a fresh home-buyer tax credit any day now. What better way to fix a bubble caused by too much home-ownership than to encourage more home-ownership? This time around, you don't even have to be a first-time buyer to take the credit. Nor do you have to be [...]