loans's archives

18
Aug

How Much Debt Is Too Much?

Posted by The Weakonomist in Wednesday, August 18th 2010   Leave a reply   

The NY Times Economix blog asked how much debt should households have. They identify a ratio total household debt to disposable income. It’s a very interesting chart which they do explain in easy to understand terms. A value of 100% means that for every dollar of disposable income someone has, they have 1 dollar in [...]

under: loans, personal finance    
11
Aug

What is Quantitative Easing?

Posted by The Weakonomist in Wednesday, August 11th 2010   Leave a reply   

Ah, quantitative easing, a complex sounding term that is actually quite simple. It’s a term that as of yet has not really filtered it’s way through the traditional media. Perhaps they haven’t taken the time to look it up on Wikipedia or they themselves find the name so daunting assume the definition is impossible to [...]

under: banking, business, economics, loans    
15
Jun

Shadow Inventory

Posted by The Weakonomist in Tuesday, June 15th 2010   2 comments already   

Following on the discussion from yesterday, there’s another topic you’re going to start hearing more about soon: shadow inventory.
What is Shadow Inventory?
Before we talk about shadow inventory, we have to first figure out what inventory is. Inventory in this case in the number of homes currently for sale in the US. Inventory can [...]

under: banking, business, loans    
14
Jun

Strategic Defaults: To Walk Or Not?

Posted by The Weakonomist in Monday, June 14th 2010   10 comments already   

It’s a sad time in the history of the US housing industry. Whether you liked it or not, the homebuyer credit giving $8,000 to first time buyers was successful in stimulating sales. Now the credit has expired, and applications for mortgages have tanked. I suspect we’re going to see sales declines as [...]

under: banking, business, loans, personal finance    
19
May

Weaky #23: There’s Profit Then There’s Exploitation

Posted by The Weakonomist in Wednesday, May 19th 2010   2 comments already   

I’m a free market kind of guy. I like the idea of allowing demand to set prices. To a certain extent I feel that if a customer gets screwed its their fault for not being better educated on their decision making processes. But every once in a while someone slips through the [...]

under: business, loans, personal finance    
17
May

CDSs Explained In A Way Even A Meth Head Can Understand

Posted by The Weakonomist in Monday, May 17th 2010   3 comments already   

I love catching up with my mom. She’s very interested in the topics I write about on the blog, but she also does a really good job of letting me know where the gaps are in what I talk about and what you may be understanding. I have the same problem when my [...]

under: banking, investing, loans    
19
Apr

What Really Happened With Goldman Sachs and the SEC

Posted by The Weakonomist in Monday, April 19th 2010   1 comment so far   

So if you heard the news at all on Friday you no doubt heard about a suit filed by the SEC against Goldman Sachs. The suit alleges that Goldmand Sachs (GS) mislead investors with a collateralized debt obligation (CDO) they were selling. The suit claims that GS sold the product knowing full and [...]

under: banking, business, government, investing, loans    
14
Apr

WaMu Crying Because They Didn’t Get TARP Money

Posted by The Weakonomist in Wednesday, April 14th 2010   1 comment so far   

This week, Kerry Killinger, the disgraced former CEO of Washington Mutual (WaMu), presents a long document to a Congressional committee investigating the WaMu takeover by the FDIC and eventual sale of the firm to JP Morgan for a fraction of its previous value during the financial crisis of 2008. A lot happened in September [...]

under: banking, economics, government, loans    
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