Hat tip to Lux Umbra Dei at TPMCafe for catching this one.
October 2008 was certainly a spectacular month in the stock markets. Large daily changes occurred that surprised most investors. Yet, although many investors had not seen such wild gyrations of stock prices for a long time, there was a general sense that this had happened before.
Those of us who studied modern finance theory, however, were truly astonished by the sheer improbability of the events occurring in the stock markets during that fateful month. One of the basic assumptions used in almost all our finance models is that returns are normally distributed. These models are widely used to price derivatives and other complex financial products. What do these models tell us about the probabilities of the events that occurred in October?
Now why could through all of that hell, have the Senate crush hope, only to turn around and say the Big 3 U.S. auto manufacturers can get some of the bail out money already approved?
The Bush administration dropped its opposition to using the $700 billion bank bailout fund to provide financing for U.S. automakers after the Senate yesterday failed to approve emergency loans
I've taken Mike Shedlock a/k/a Mish to task on a couple of items lately. But one of his graphs tells a very interesting and timely story that is worth a little more in-depth discussion.
Most people who have read about the Great Depression understand that part of what happened is that the money supply (M1 and M2) contracted sharply and that there is a school of thought that this was a prime driver of the Depression. But then there's the anomaly shown in this graph:
As I will discuss below, the two spikes in the monetary base - in December 1930 and October 2008 - have a lot in common.
Bank of America said late Thursday that it plans to cut up to 35,000 jobs over the next three years as the financial giant adjusts to a recession and completes the pending acquisition of brokerage firm Merrill Lynch & Co.
This comes as the latest wave of mass layoffs in the troubled financial sector, which has been crippled by the credit crunch and the failure of large institutions such as Lehman Brothers More than 220,000 jobs already have been lost across the sector this year, according to labor-tracking firm Challenger Gray & Christmas.
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
- Albert Einstein
America didn't arrive at our current predicament by chance. We got here by repeatedly applying the same solution to the same problem, over and over again, while ignoring the fact that it never worked. This has been true for decades, through both Republican and Democratic Administrations.
It makes a person wonder if the root cause has more to do with corruption than with ideology.
Example #1)
In December 1982, Reagan signed into the law the Garn-St Germain Depository Institutions Act. It was the culmination of four years of deregulation of the S&L Industry that began under the Carter Administration. Thus began a financial disaster.
What many people aren't aware of is how Wall Street profited from this, and caused it.
Well, in case you've missed it tonight, the Senate's attempt at a deal collapsed. At the heart of demise of the bill were Republicans refusal to pass the legislation handed to the chamber. Lead by Tennessee Senator, Bob Corker, the GOP demanded that the UAW take further wage cuts earlier than proposed. Corker and others wanted union wages to meet parity to those found by transplants like Toyota or Honda in southern states.
It's Friday Night! Party Time! Time to relax, put your feet up on the couch, lay back, and watch some detailed videos on economic policy! 
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