Monthly Archives: July 2009

I need to set up the urgency over the past two years to get the mortgage-backed security refinancing question just right. So I’m going to start with two long blockquotes (forgive me) from Lewis Ranieri, who created the mortgage-backed security … Continue reading →

I follow up on Taunter’s excellent post on rescission over at The Atlantic. It’s a ramble that I had fun with, about zombies and end of the world trades and credit cards and how if rescission happened to credit cards, … Continue reading →

Peter Wallison responds to the defense of the Consumer Financial Protection Agency by Elizabeth Warren over at the BaselineScenario. Here is Wallison: The irony here is that Warren is not herself perceptive enough to understand what the consumers who took … Continue reading →

I have a writeup of some of the issues surrounding High Frequency Trading over at The Atlantic Business. The issue can get mind-numbing technical for a general audience, so I tried to convey the Economic 101 issues at play here, … Continue reading →

Nick Schulz, who I’ve had the pleasure to have a few email exchanges with, steps into the anti-Consumer Protection arena with Protecting Consumers Against Another Failure of Government. He tries to find ways that the government can step out of … Continue reading →

There are many people who see the housing bubble as primarily a government creation. One tool in that argument that the interest rate deduction we give on taxes, where you can write off the interest you pay on your mortgage … Continue reading →

Felix responds to my previous post about 401(k)s and still believes his “thesis that financial innovation over the past couple of decades has been, on net, a bad thing.” Felix isn’t necessarily looking for a specific instrument that has been … Continue reading →

What’s the most important financial “innovation” for regular consumers of the past 30 years? It has an obvious answer. No, it is not the ATM machine. I’ll give you the answer in a bit. Felix and Tyler have a go … Continue reading →

Elizabeth Warren has a guest post up At the Baseline Scenario, arguing for the Consumer Financial Products Agency. It’s a really solid post, listing the current wave of complaints against the agency and dismissing them one by one. I think … Continue reading →

F***. I’m not going to turn this into a livejournal, but I do want to show off the tattoo I got myself for turning 30 under the fold.