From the Real-World Economics Review Blog, a timeline of warnings and events going back to 1995 and leading up to the financial crisis of the last few years. Some early warnings from various economists: Sept, 2001 “the new housing boom is another rapidly inflating asset bubble financed by the same loose money practices that fuelled [...]

MIT economist Simon Johnson writes on the blog The Baseline Scenario that the European debt downgrades of the last two days constitute a genuine crisis: Wake the President Most days we can coast along, confident that tomorrow will be much like yesterday. On a very few days we need to look hard at the news [...]

Ever check out Intrade? It’s an online futures market, currently made up of 102,000 members, where you can bet on the outcome of a particular occurrence, giving or taking the odds that the market itself has set. People who subscribe to the “wisdom of crowds” theory often check the site to see what the “market” [...]

Last week, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania said it won’t make a scheduled bond payment of $425,282 due on May 1st. Some commentary: Mish’s Global Economic Trend Analysis I do not like Munis here. For starters, I think there will be a number of counties in Florida that go bankrupt. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (the state capitol) is likely to [...]

Time magazine describes the SEC fraud case against Goldman Sachs this way: On Friday, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed civil securities-fraud charges against Goldman Sachs, alleging the investment bank and its partners created mortgage bonds that were set up to go bust. Goldman then sold these bonds, which are called collateralized debt obligations [...]

Chart from the World Economic Forum: Global Risk Landscape 2010, showing the likelihood of specific risks (terrorism, infectious disease, food price volatility, etc.) with corresponding severity of economic loss. Also look at this “Risks Interconnection Map,” which shows “an overview of all risks and their interconnections.” It’s a little hard to understand but looks like [...]

“Unless you’re in the habit of buying new highs, the ascent of this market has been way less enjoyable over the last 6 weeks than the headlines would lead outsiders to believe.” We are heading into the home stretch here at EconomyBeat — the project concludes at the end of April. Thus, this will be [...]

A new paper that will be published in the Journal of Investment Management posits the theory that economists suffer from “physics envy,” aspiring to create economic models “as predictive as those in physics. While this perspective has led to a number of important breakthroughs in economics,” says the abstract, “‘physics envy’ has also created a [...]

And now we bring you The Brokers With Hands on Their Faces Blog, no explanatory text necessary I think. Click here for more photos of brokers with hands on their faces.

Normally, the only time I am interested in currency policy is when I look into my wallet and wonder where mine went. But here’s an interesting series of posts on what to do about the artificially low rate of China’s renminbi, which the country keeps pegged to the rate of the U.S. dollar. By keeping [...]