If there's such a thing as too big to fail, no one qualifies more clearly than Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Unfortunately, splitting them up won't get government out of the loan guarantee business. Smaller companies in the subprime industry...
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Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg
An anti-foreclosure demonstration outside Fannie Mae headquarters.
Fannie and Freddie, the $5 Trillion Gorillas the U.S. Just Can’t Kill
Photographer: Scott Eells/Bloomberg
Steven "Steve" Cohen, chairman and chief executive officer of SAC Captial Advisors LP
What Makes Steve Cohen’s Stock Picks So Special?
Why is Steven A, Cohen’s SAC such a tempting target for prosecutors? Yes, Cohen is well known and successful; so are other fund managers. The difference is that we have a pretty good idea of roughly what other successful fund...
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Photographer: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg
Cyprus in April, 2012. Looks like everyone's already left to line up at the ATM.
Two Contrarian Arguments for the Cyprus Deposit Tax
The only people who don't seem to hate the plan are those who are just left speechless. Still there's a case to be made that (a) for most Cypriots it beats the alternatives and (b) a devastating run on the...
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The National Council Chamber in the Federal Palace, Bern. Swiss legislators now must work out how to implement the 'rip-off' resolution.
Do You Think Execs Should Be Paid $78 Million to Get Lost? That’s a Really Easy Question.
In his new book Thinking, Fast and Slow, the Nobel-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman, demonstrates how when people are confronted with difficult questions, they tend to get around them by answering easier ones. You can't find a better example than the...
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Photograph by Christian Heeb/laif/Redux
The San Remo apartment building, on New York's Upper West Side.
4 BRs, $29,750 a Month: a Story of Inflation
In 1940, the most expensive apartment in the San Remo, the Art Deco masterpiece looking out over Central Park, rented for $900 a month. A more typical price was $540. Now an apartment there lists for $29,750 a month, a...
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Photograph by American Stock/Getty Images
Deflation isn't always accompanied by Depression-style soup lines.
How Much Should We Fear Deflation?
"Deflationary spirals" have been a major subject on the economics agenda. The theory is clear, but there are few actual examples to study. The Great Depression in the United States is one, and Japan is another.
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Photographer: Gianluca Colla/Bloomberg
In the mortgage bond boom, banks and hedge funds, not homeowners and debtors, stand to gain most.
A Mortgage Bond Boom Isn’t a Housing Recovery
The winners in a Federal effort to keep housing afloat are banks, investors, and a limited group of homeowners. The losers are those who who buy homes expecting they will gain value over the next decades.
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Photographer: Davis Turner/Bloomberg
Tobacco’s Gift Keeps on Giving
How much longer can the money from the multi-state tobacco settlement last? Maybe longer than you think. For some ages groups, smoking rates have actually climbed.
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Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg
John Stucker, a Purdue University student must pay back $80,000 he borrowed.
Out of the Mortgage Frying Pan, Into the Student Loan Fire
What’s going to be the bigger drag on the economy over the next years: the overhang of unpaid mortgages or the burden of student loans? At Bloomberg today, some unexpected answers. First, the mortgage front. Yesterday Bloomberg’s Dan Levy reported...
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Photographer: Tim Boyle/Bloomberg
Love the Fed Rally? Then Hope the Economy Catches Up
It has become the strangest yet most predictable move in this economy: The worse it gets, the higher the market goes. When the economic numbers are bad, the Fed moves in and the markets shoot up. On Thursday we saw...
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