Category: Markets

A Grand Unified Theory of municipal insolvency: Part 2, Headed for the brambles

5 June, 2013 (09:00) | Bonds, Cities, David Unkovic, Harrisburg, Infrastructure, Litigation, Loopholes, Markets, Municipal bankruptcy, Municipal Finance, ratings agencies, SEC, solid waste, US News | No comments

  [Continued from yesterday's Part 1]   By:David A. Smith   If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bull. – W. C. Fields  Yesterday’s post present part of former Harrisburg receiver David Unkovic’s extraordinary speech to a national symposium on Distressed Municipalities, in which he laid out clearly why he believes that [...]

Doors of equal size: Part 2, left over women

31 May, 2013 (09:00) | Apartments, China, Demographics, Families, Global news, Housing, Markets, marriage, Speculation, Urbanization | No comments

 By:David A. Smith   [Continued from yesterday's Part 1]   Yesterday’s post on matchmaking in China, using an absorbing article in the New York Times (March 10, 2013) (channeling China Daily three years earlier), brought us two demographic realities: China’s wealth has been booming, leading to a widening Gini coefficient (haves and have-nots) and China has [...]

Doors of equal size: Part 1, excess men

30 May, 2013 (09:49) | Apartments, China, Demographics, Families, Global news, Housing, Markets, marriage, Speculation, Urbanization | No comments

By:David A. Smith   So bound up are we by our place of habitation (you are what you live in) that we use abode as a proxy for family status (household!), for social status (“they bought a McMansion“), for family configuration (“we’re moving in together”), and for health status (“we’re moving Mom to a nursing [...]

Bottomless deflation

28 May, 2013 (16:58) | Euro, Foreclosure, Global news, Homeownership, Markets, Mortgages, Spain, Speculation | No comments

By:David A. Smith   Spain is caught in a deflationary spiral, and as far as I can tell it is only getting worse.   From positive money, 2010   When a delinquent entity whose solvency is in question is not a bank or company but a nation, the techniques that work for addressing a bankor [...]

Harrisburg’s quest for the Holy Grail: Part 5, Now we see the violence inherent in the system

24 May, 2013 (09:27) | Bonds, Cities, Harrisburg, Infrastructure, Litigation, Loopholes, Markets, Municipal bankruptcy, Municipal Finance, ratings agencies, SEC, solid waste, US News | 1 comment

[Continued from yesterday's Part 4 and the preceding Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.]   By:David A. Smith   In late November, 2011, as the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania was moving to appoint a receiver for its state capitol, Harrisburg, the city council by a 4-3 vote abruptly filed a bankruptcy petition, which was immediately [...]