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mr-damon

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Mr. Damon is a person from Virgin Islands (U.S.)

Est modus in rebus.

  • Lessons From Japan in Stemming a Crisis - NYTimes.com

    Rated Feb 13 2009 • 2 reviews • economics, japan, usa, money, finance • nytimes.com

    The Obama administration is committing huge sums of money to rescuing banks, but the veterans of Japan's banking crisis have three words for the Americans: more money, faster.

    The Japanese have been here before. They endured a "lost decade" of economic stagnation in the 1990s as their banks labored under crippling debt, and successive governments wasted trillions of yen on half-measures.

    Only in 2003 did the government finally take the actions that helped lead to a recovery: forcing major banks to submit to merciless audits and declare bad debts; spending two trillion yen to effectively nationalize a major bank, wiping out its shareholders; and allowing weaker banks to fail.

    By then, Tokyo's main Nikkei stock index had lost almost three-quarters of its value. The country's public debt had grown to exceed its gross domestic product, and deflation stalked the land. In the end, real estate prices fell for 15 consecutive years.

    More alarming? Some students of the Japanese debacle say they see a similar train wreck heading for the United States.

    "I thought America had studied Japan's failures," said Hirofumi Gomi, a top official at Japan's Financial Services Agency during the crisis. "Why is it making the same mistakes?"

    Many American critics of the plan unveiled Tuesday by Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said the plan lacked details. Experts on Japan found it timid -- especially given the size of the banking crisis the administration faces.

    "I think they know how big it is, but they don't want to say how big it is. It's so big they can't acknowledge it," said John H. Makin, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute, referring to administration officials. "The lesson from Japan in the 1990s was that they should have stepped up and nationalized the banks."
    2 views
    Lessons From Japan in Stemming a Crisis - NYTimes.com

  • Back at Junk Value, Recyclables Are Piling Up - NYTimes.com

    Rated Dec 07 2008 • 1 review • economics, environment, recycling, usa, trash • nytimes.com

    The precipitous drop in prices for recyclables makes the stock market's performance seem almost enviable.

    On the West Coast, for example, mixed paper is selling for $20 to $25 a ton, down from $105 in October, according to Official Board Markets, a newsletter that tracks paper prices. And recyclers say tin is worth about $5 a ton, down from $327 earlier this year. There is greater domestic demand for glass, so its price has not fallen as much.

    This is a cyclical industry that has seen price swings before. The scrap market in general is closely tied to economic conditions because demand for some recyclables tracks closely with markets for new products. Cardboard, for instance, turns into the boxes that package electronics, rubber goes to shoe soles, and metal is made into auto parts.

    One reason prices slid so rapidly this time is that demand from China, the biggest export market for recyclables from the United States, quickly dried up as the global economy slowed. China's influence is so great that in recent years recyclables have been worth much less in areas of the United States that lack easy access to ports that can ship there.

    The downturn offers some insight into the forces behind the recycling boom of recent years. Environmentally conscious consumers have been able to pat themselves on the back and feel good about sorting their recycling and putting it on the curb. But most recycling programs have been driven as much by raw economics as by activism.

    Cities and their contractors made recycling easy in part because there was money to be made. Businesses, too -- like grocery chains and other retailers -- have profited by recycling thousands of tons of materials like cardboard each month.

    But the drop in prices has made the profits shrink, or even disappear, undermining one rationale for recycling programs and their costly infrastructure.
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    Back at Junk Value, Recyclables Are Piling Up - NYTimes.com

  • The New York Times > Education > Image >...

    Rated Dec 03 2008 • 1 review • economics, education, usa, money, college • nytimes.com



    "When the economy is good, and state universities are somewhat better funded, we raise tuition as little as possible," he said. "When the economy is bad, we raise tuition and sock it to families, when people can least afford it. That's exactly the opposite of what we need."
    1 view
    The New York Times > Education > Image > Soaring College Tuitions

  • Topic Galleries -- chicagotribune.com

    Rated Nov 24 2008 • 1 review • agriculture, economics, free, usa, food • chicagotribune.com

    Joe and Chris Miller's fields were picked so clean Saturday that a second day of gleaning -- the ancient practice of picking up leftover food in farm fields -- was canceled Sunday.

    "Overwhelmed is putting it mildly," Chris Miller said. "People obviously need food."

    She said she expected 5,000 to 10,000 people would show up Saturday to collect free potatoes, carrots and leeks. Instead, an estimated 11,000 vehicles snaked around cornfields and backed up more than two miles. About 30 acres of the 600-acre farm 37 miles north of Denver became a parking lot.
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    Topic Galleries -- chicagotribune.com

  • A Sea of Unwanted Imports - NYTimes.com

    Rated Nov 19 2008 • 1 review • cars, economics, autos, usa, california • nytimes.com

    Gleaming new Mercedes cars roll one by one out of a huge container ship here and onto a pier. Ordinarily the cars would be loaded on trucks within hours, destined for dealerships around the country. But these are not ordinary times.


    For now, the port itself is the destination. Unwelcome by dealers and buyers, thousands of cars worth tens of millions of dollars are being warehoused on increasingly crowded port property.

    And for the first time, Mercedes-Benz, Toyota, and Nissan have each asked to lease space from the port for these orphan vehicles. They are turning dozens of acres of the nation's second-largest container port into a parking lot, creating a vivid picture of a paralyzed auto business and an economy in peril.
    1 view
    A Sea of Unwanted Imports - NYTimes.com

  • http://iht.com/articles/2008/10/29/business/29credit.php

    Rated Oct 28 2008 • 1 review • economics, credit cards, money, consumer, credit • iht.com

    Big lenders -- like American Express, Bank of America, Citigroup and even the retailer Target -- have begun tightening standards for applicants and are culling their portfolios of the riskiest customers. Capital One, a big issuer, for example, has aggressively shut down inactive accounts and reduced customer credit lines by 4.5 percent in the second quarter from the previous period, according to regulatory filings.

    Lenders are shunning consumers already in debt and cutting credit limits for existing cardholders, especially those who live in areas ravaged by the housing crisis or work in troubled industries. In some cases, certain lenders are even pulling in credit lines after monitoring cardholders who shop at the same stores as other risky borrowers or who have mortgages from certain banks.

    While such changes protect banks, some can come back to haunt consumers. The result can be a lower credit score, which forces a borrower to pay higher interest rates and makes it harder to obtain loans. A reduced line of credit can also make it harder for consumers to manage their budgets since lenders have 30 days to notify their customers, and often do so only after taking action.

    The depth of the financial crisis has shocked a credit-hooked nation into rethinking its habits. Many families once content to buy now and pay later are eager to trim their reliance on credit cards. The Treasury Department, which is spending billions in taxpayer money to clean up an economic mess triggered in part by all sorts of easy credit, recently started an advertising campaign inviting consumers to check into the "Bad Credit Hotel," an online game that teaches the basics of maintaining good credit.

    At the same time, the fear factor among lenders has deepened just as the crisis makes it harder for some financially stretched consumers to wean themselves from credit cards for even basic needs, like gas and food.
    176 views
    http://iht.com/articles/2008/10/29/business/29credit.php

  • http://iht.com/articles/2008/10/29/business/29carr.php

    Rated Oct 28 2008 • 1 review • economics, publishing, journalism, newspapers, media • iht.com

    Stop and think about where you are reading this column. If you are one of the million or so people who are reading it in a newspaper that landed on your doorstop or that you picked up at the corner, you are in the minority. This same information is available to many more millions on this paper's Web site, in RSS feeds, on hand-held devices, linked and summarized all over the Web.

    Historically, people took an interest in the daily paper about the time they bought a home. Now they are checking their BlackBerrys for alerts about mortgage rates.

    "The auto industry and the print industry have essentially the same problem," said Clay Shirky, the author of "Here Comes Everybody." "The older customers like the older products and the new customers like the new ones."

    For readers, the drastic diminishment of print raises an obvious question: if more people are reading newspapers and magazines, why should we care whether they are printed on paper?

    The answer is that paper is not just how news is delivered; it is how it is paid for.

    More than 90 percent of the newspaper industry's revenue still derives from the print product, a legacy technology that attracts fewer consumers and advertisers every single day. A single newspaper ad might cost many thousands of dollars while an online ad might only bring in $20 for each 1,000 customers who see it.

    The difference between print dollars and digital dimes -- or sometimes pennies -- is being taken out of the newsrooms that supply both. And while it is indeed tough all over in this economy, consider the consequences.

    New Jersey, a petri dish of corruption, will have to make do with 40 percent fewer reporters at The Star-Ledger, one of the few remaining cops on the beat. The Los Angeles Times, which toils under Hollywood's nose, has one movie reviewer left on staff. And dozens of communities served by Gannett will have fewer reporters and editors overseeing the deeds and misdeeds of local government and businesses.

    The authors and book publishers looking for royalties from the Google deal may be the lucky ones in the old media sweepstakes. Print publishers are madly cutting, in part because the fourth quarter, postfinancial crisis, is going to be a miserable one. Advertising from the car industry, retail business and financial services -- for years, the three sturdy legs of a stool that print once rested comfortably on -- are in steep decline.
    74 views
    http://iht.com/articles/2008/10/29/business/29carr.php

  • The Debt Trap - Banks Mine Data and Woo Troubled...

    Rated Oct 21 2008 • 1 review • economics, debt, money, credit, finance • nytimes.com

    Singling out even struggling American consumers like Ms. Jerez is one of the overlooked causes of the debt boom and the resulting crisis, which threatens to choke the global economy.

    Using techniques that grew more sophisticated over the last decade, businesses comb through an array of sources, including bank and court records, to create detailed profiles of the financial lives of more than 100 million Americans.

    They then sell that information as marketing leads to banks, credit card issuers and mortgage brokers, who fiercely compete to find untapped customers -- even those who would normally have trouble qualifying for the credit they were being pitched.

    These tailor-made offers land in mailboxes, or are sold over the phone by telemarketers, just ahead of the next big financial step in consumers' lives, creating the appearance of almost irresistible serendipity.

    These leads, which typically cost a few cents for each household profile, are often called "trigger lists" in the industry. One company, First American, sells a list of consumers to lenders called a "farming kit."

    This marketplace for personal data has been a crucial factor in powering the unrivaled lending machine in the United States. European countries, by contrast, have far stricter laws limiting the sale of personal information. Those countries also have far lower per-capita debt levels.
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    The Debt Trap - Banks Mine Data and Woo Troubled Borrowers - NYTimes.com

  • Banks Are Likely to Hold Tight to Bailout Money -...

    Rated Oct 16 2008 • 1 review • economics, banking, finance, usa, money • nytimes.com

    As two financial giants, Citigroup and Merrill Lynch, reported fresh multibillion-dollar losses on Thursday, the industry passed a grim milestone: All of the combined profits that major banks earned in recent years have vanished.

    Since mid-2007, when the credit crisis erupted, the country's nine largest banks have written down the value of their troubled assets by a combined $323 billion. With a recession looming, the pain is unlikely to end there. The problems that began with home mortgages, analysts say, are migrating to auto, credit card and commercial real estate loans.

    The deepening red ink underscores a crucial question about the government's plan: Will lenders deploy their new-found capital quickly, as the Treasury hopes, and unlock the flow of credit through the economy? Or will they hoard the money to protect themselves?

    John A. Thain, the chief executive of Merrill Lynch, said on Thursday that banks were unlikely to act swiftly. Executives at other banks privately expressed a similar view.

    "We will have the opportunity to redeploy that," Mr. Thain said of the new capital on a telephone call with analysts. "But at least for the next quarter, it's just going to be a cushion."

    Granted, the banks are in a deep hole. For every dollar the banks earned during the industry's most prosperous years, they have now wiped out $1.06.

    Even with the capital from the government, analysts say, the banking industry still needs to raise around $275 billion in light of the looming losses.

    But Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. is urging them to use their new capital soon. On Monday, Mr. Paulson unveiled plans to provide $125 billion to nine banks on terms that were more favorable than they would have received in the marketplace. The government, however, has offered no written requirements about how or when the banks must use the money.
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    Banks Are Likely to Hold Tight to Bailout Money - NYTimes.com

  • Drama Behind a $250 Billion Banking Deal - NYTimes.com

    Rated Oct 14 2008 • 1 review • economics, banking, finance, usa, money • nytimes.com

    The Treasury's plan would help the United States catch up to Europe in what has become a footrace between countries to reassure investors that their banks will not default or that other countries will not one-up their rescue plans and, in so doing, siphon off bank deposits or investment capital.

    "The Europeans not only provided a blueprint, but forced our hand," said Kenneth S. Rogoff, a professor of economics at Harvard and an adviser to John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate. "We're trying to prevent wholesale carnage in the financial system."

    In the process, Mr. Rogoff and other experts said, the government is remaking the financial landscape in ways that would have been unimaginable a few weeks ago -- taking stakes in the industry and making Washington the ultimate guarantor for banking in the United States.

    But the pace of the crisis has driven events, and fissures in places as far-flung as Iceland, which suffered a wholesale collapse of its banks, persuaded officials to act far more decisively than they had previously.

    "Over the weekend, I thought it could come out very badly," said Simon Johnson, a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund. "But we stepped back from the cliff."

    The guarantee on bank debt is similar to one announced by several European countries earlier on Monday, and is meant to unlock the lending market between banks. Banks have curtailed such lending -- considered crucial to the smooth running of the financial system and the broader economy -- because they fear they will not be repaid if a bank borrower runs into trouble.

    But officials said they hoped the guarantee on new senior debt would have an even broader effect than an interbank lending guarantee because it should also stimulate lending to businesses.

    Another part of the government's remedy is to extend the federal deposit insurance to cover all small-business deposits. Federal regulators recently have been noticing that small-business customers, which tend to carry balances over the federal insurance limits, had been withdrawing their money from weaker banks and moving it to bigger, more stable banks.

    Congress had already raised the F.D.I.C.'s deposit insurance limit to $250,000 earlier this month, extending coverage to roughly 68 percent of small-business deposits, according to estimates by Oliver Wyman, a financial services consulting firm. The new rules would cover the remaining 32 percent.

    "Imposing unlimited deposit insurance doesn't fix the underlying problem, but it does reduce the threat of overnight failures," said Jaret Seiberg, a financial services policy analyst at the Stanford Group in Washington.

    "If you reduce the threat of overnight failures," Mr. Seiberg said, "you start to encourage lending to each other overnight, which starts to restore the normal functioning of the credit markets."

    Recapitalizing banks is not without its risks, experts warned, pointing to the example of Britain, which announced its program last week and injected its first capital into three banks on Monday.

    Shares of the newly nationalized banks -- Royal Bank of Scotland, HBOS and Lloyds -- slumped on Monday, despite a surge in banks elsewhere, because shareholder value was diluted by the government.

    The move, analysts said, makes the government Britain's biggest banker. And it creates a two-tier banking system in which the nationalized banks are run like utilities and others are free to pursue profit growth. As part of the plan, the chief executives of the three banks stepped down.

    Still, Mr. Paulson's strategy was backed by lawmakers, including Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, who said he preferred capital injections to buying distressed mortgage-related assets -- a proposal that Treasury pushed aggressively before its turnabout.
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    Drama Behind a $250 Billion Banking Deal - NYTimes.com