Category: Uncategorized

Just getting back after a brief break, and we’re thrilled to see this.

Funds Will Support New Independent High School Offering Classical and Uniquely Integrated Curriculum
St. Louis Park, Minnesota, May 19, 2010 — Chesterton Academy, a private, independent college preparatory school, announced today that it has received an exciting fundraising opportunity from Andrew Redleaf, founder and CEO of Whitebox Advisors. Mr. Redleaf has agreed to match, dollar for [...]

We certainly do need to slow down markets. There is no possible economic justification for markets trading at their current pace. Hi-speed trading does not increase the intelligence of the market, it simply testifies to the meaninglessness of market prices, their complete detachment from value. See Chapter 9 of PANIC titled “Zoom, Zoom, Zoom”
AR & [...]

As if there were ever any doubt that the worst banks on the block were the two run by Barney Frank and Chris Dodd, CBO now confirms that rescuing Fannie and Freddie will cost taxpayers at least $389 billion.
Of course lots of the money spent on the twins indirectly goes to bailing out the other [...]

Nicole Gelinas is 100 percent right that rules are better than regulators–and she proposes three good rules. But though we’d vote for all three in a second none actually make markets themselves stronger. The only way to do that is to give markets more, better information.

One of the many reasons to hate Goldman is that it is hard to stop thinking about them. Sure a good paradigm is a terrible thing to waste, but at some point enough is enough.
Not yet apparently. Last night it occurred to us what this whole Goldman, Paulson, IKB (the [...]

By Andrew Redleaf
Central to former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan’s desperate efforts to restore his place in history—or at least to rewrite what currently looks like a pretty dismal chapter is the Greenspan Theory of Bubbles.  The Greenspan Theory makes several propositions, but the most important is this:
No merely human mind is capable of identifying a [...]

One more Goldman thought
How can the Senate think that it’s just really, really awful for Goldman not to tell one supposedly sophisticated casino player, that German bank, that there was another sophisticated casino player on the other side of the table; or to fail to disclose that Goldman was not tipping the odds in [...]

GOP succeeds in getting an “open amendment” debate.
Now all they need is an amendment!
Last night Republicans succeeded in persuading Democrats to actually allow the GOP to offer some new ideas during the debate on financial reform.
Now all the GOP needs are some ideas–always a challenge for the Stupid Party. But we have one for [...]

CEO Blankfein says Goldman does God’s work. He must have meant bingo.
The legitimate function of financial markets is to efficiently move money from savers into business investment. This is true of primary issues—a newly issued stock or bond—but also of secondary sales (I sell you my pre-existing shares of SNAFU industries) because even in the [...]