Frontrunning: September 21

• Bank of England openly opposed consumer thrift, warns of dire consequences of prudent behavior (Telegraph) Federal Reserve to follow suit any minute
• The Treasury-Fed pissing contest begins? Fed rejects Geithner request for study of governance, structure (Bloomberg)
• Krugman says "End of World Postponed", few months after he said all is good with the economy, next up: Krugman firm believer in Bull Market 2009 and Credit Bubble 3.0 (Bloomberg)
• European property groups face debt time-bomb (FT)
• Homeowners who "strategically default" on loans a growing problem (LA Times)
• Evans-Pritchard: Debt deflation laboratory of the Baltics (Telegraph)
• One interpretation: M&A Boom signaled for S&P 500 index on record cash (Bloomberg); Another: companies are visibly overvalued, are not buying back their stock, their insiders are selling in droves, no follow ons are occuring in most industries, and stocks no longer reflect the true value of corporations. Take you pick.
• Citi's Tom King, head of corporate, IB and capital markets leaving, likely heading to Barclays (Bloomberg)
• GEAB 37 (Mercato Libero)
• Look beyond the shipping forewarnings (FT)
• Centerview's Blair Effron: The case for an employer tax break (WSJ)
• Ratings downgrade (New Yorker)
• Ex-Wells Fargo loan officer details shady practices (Bnet)
• Chinese steel industry to slow down on credit squeeze (Steelguru)
• HSBC bids farewell to dollar supremacy (Telegraph)

Comments

[glenlloyd]

Don't you just love it when govt starts telling you what you should do with your money? Since when is that any of their business? Oh right, they run the economy now..

[Anonymous]

"warns of dire consequences of prudent behavior"

Resume your civil responsibility as consumers or we shall add additional taxes to your income, investments or savings to make up for shortfalls.

Buy or die!

[Spartacus]

Perot Options Trading Rose to Seven-Year High Before Dell Bid - Bloomberg

What a system? Blatant insider trading, it is like SEC is in a deep slumber.

[Hephasteus]

Dell is as inside as it gets. You can count on Dell, Intel, and IBM breaking every rule in the book every time. HP seems to have come around and joined the coroporate crony brigade as well.

Dell will break any antitrust law you put at it's feet. Guaranteed.

[Brick]

The paradox of thrift is something government should have been looking at all along and signals a failure in consumer protection. Short guarantees, poor quality, small print and inflated prices mean corporates have lost their consumers trust.Reading the full bank of england report it becomes quite clear that they think the thrift problem is due to expectations that tax and interest rates will rise. In essence they say the paradox of thrift as a natural result of government over spend. The global imbalances report is well worth a read because it shows the UK has had virtually no growth for the last 20 years. The systemic risk report also indicates 26 percent of financial respondents believe sovereign risk is a major risk. It is also interesting in their markets report that they expect dollar interest rates to exceed those of all other currencies. There is also a bit of a swipe at equity markets as well.

[ptoemmes]

The phrase "paradox of (too much) debt" comes to my mind.

[Hephasteus]

Paradox is just another word for lie. Or logic bomb created by an underlying lie.

[Gilgamesh]

PM (and anyone else who follows this stuff) -

I wanted to share this before, but couldn't.  It was leaked earlier this month (twice) but not really announced until now.  I've followed this since before Digital Angel days, and it's hit critical mass unfortunately:

VeriChip Corporation Granted Exclusive License for Patents Used in Virus Triage Detection System for H1N1 Virus

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/VeriChip-Corporation-Granted-bw-1709005164.html?x=0&.v=1

[Anonymous]

Consumers today are stuck at the window of a burning building (their houses) with only one option available: jump. Once down (and after the bones have healed) they can start to look for a new place to live and rebuild their lives.

The government's response has been to put out the fire (a good first step) but then tell us not to jump, it'll hurt the economy. WTF?

If they want to help people get off the ledge they need to give us a way of getting down safely. All I know for sure is, we're coming down. But where's our net? Some WS bankers are taking a nap on it.