Month: January, 2009

Staying together for the sake of the bills: Part 2, living with it

30 January, 2009 (10:18) | Configuration, Families, Housing, Rental, Tenure, US News | No comments

[Continued from yesterday's Part 1.]
 

As we saw yesterday, using some slice-of-life divorce drama from The New York Times, divorce not only ends a legal entity (the marital estate), it requires division of the assets into two independent clusters.
 

Each of us gets half of these assets
 
Dividing the marital union destroys economic value, both in transaction costs [...]

Staying together for the sake of the bills: Part 1, coming apart

29 January, 2009 (10:59) | Configuration, Families, Housing, Rental, Tenure, US News | No comments

Homes are great when we’re sessile, but when we’re mobile, the equity is a millstone – too valuable to abandon without a fight, yet incredibly difficult to liquefy, as illustrated in this revealing slice-of-life divorce drama from The New York Times:
 
When Marci Needle and her husband began to contemplate divorce in June, they thought [...]

Supermarket sweepstakes: legislative budget scoring

28 January, 2009 (10:29) | Congress, Legislation and policy, Primer Posts, US News | No comments

For the time being, those making the Washington sausage have given themselves leave to spend whatever they think appropriate, but it was not always so, and it will not be so again. 
 

Ready to spend the public’s money?
 
One day – and it may well be in the second session of this Congress, after the stimulus [...]

As the china breaks

27 January, 2009 (10:36) | Capital markets, China, Global news | No comments

As risk re-pricing is now sweeping the globe, it will touch every moneyed nation, whether it be debtor (the US) or creditor (China).  Even as the US economy undergoes its multi-stage recapitalization – first HERA, then TARP, now the Obama-nibus Stimulus Bill – we will get a first-hand experiment in how different financial ecosystems respond [...]

Month in Review, December 2008: Part 2, things looking up

26 January, 2009 (12:51) | Admin, Month in review | No comments

Previous Months in Review available here:  [Nov 08, Oct 08 Sep  08, Aug 08, Jul 08, Jun 08, May 08, Apr 08, Mar 08, Feb 08, Jan 08]
 
[Continued from Monday 19th’s Part 1.]
 
Reviewing an active December, yesterday’s post cleared out the bad news; now we turn to the more pleasurable sport of excoriating those who we [...]