Christopher Whalen

Thomas Piketty has written a new book that is causing a great commotion inside and outside of liberal economic circles, among Americans who think themselves to be “progressive” but are really just plain socialists.  The basic thesis of the book,

In this installment of Washington & Wall Street, we take readers of Breitbart News into the obscure world of the bond market and an important subset, namely the world of mortgage loan servicing and the “to be announced” (TBA) market

Federal Reserve Board Chairman Janet Yellen has made it known that the United States Central Bank is fine with the idea that the U.S. housing market is contracting.  In a research note, analysts at Bank of America Merrill Lynch said

The Revolt Against the Masses: How Liberalism has Undermined the Middle Class is one of the most important books written about American politics in the past fifty years.  The author, Fred Siegel, is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for

The liberal dictatorship of Richard Cordray at the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB) came under fire this week when the head of the House Financial Services Committee (HFSC) called for the agency to open up its four advisory council meetings

As I traveled back from the EU this weekend, a story in the Financial Times about the unrealized losses that the Fed has generated on its vast portfolio of U.S. Treasury and Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS) caught my eye. These losses, contrary

This week Washington and Wall Street is “Down and Out in Paris and London,” to borrow the title from the autobiography of George Orwell. We are attending the Paris meeting of the Global Interdependence Center in Philadelphia, which is hosted

This week, many Wall Street traders got caught on the wrong foot when the dictator of Russia, Vladimir Putin, decided to seize the Crimean Peninsula. On Tuesday, the U.S. Stock Market sprang back, but that does not mean that the

“Folly is a greater enemy of the good than evil.” Deitrich Bonhoeffer As the annual Conservative Political Action Conference opens this week in Washington, a rival conference organized by conservative activists like Stephen K. Bannon, executive chairman of Breitbart News,

New York City Mayor Mayor Bill de Blasio has only been in office for a short time, but already he is starting to look like a lame duck. A year ago, nobody would take a call from de Blasio, but

The bankrupt city of Detroit is going through a terrible process of identifying all of the vacant buildings in this once teaming metropolis. The New York Times reports: All over Detroit, scores of these workers — on some days as many

In her first appearance before Congress this week, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen achieved the primary goal of any new Fed chief and avoided any obvious land mines. But what was lacking in the dialogue, both from Yellen and the

Last week, the office of the United States Postal Service inspector general released a white paper touting a “huge market” represented by the population of Americans that is underserved by traditional banks and non-bank financial providers.  The proposal is strongly supported

As Jack Kemp famously said, “”It is not enough to be against something; you have to tell people what you are for.” Last week I wrote a long analysis on Zero Hedge asking a simple question: Is the Housing Sector a Drag on

Before and during the State of the Union message, President Obama declared that he intended to act by Executive Order to address issues like the economy.  He did not mention, as we discussed in the last column, the much of

Last week, I spent a very enjoyable hour with my friend Barry Ritholtz, an American author, newspaper columnist, blogger, equities analyst, CIO of Ritholtz Wealth Management, and guest commentator on Bloomberg Television. He is just starting a new radio program

The latest economic indicators continue to suggest that the housing market is slowing due to the twin evils of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform law and the Fed’s low interest rate policies.  The former has greatly constricted the availability of

George Orwell wrote in his classic book Nineteen Eighty-Four that “He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.”  You need no better example of this than the way in which the Federal

Last week’s job numbers suggest very strongly that the Obama Depression may be accelerating. Economists of all stripes are trying to pretend that the numbers were not as ugly as they well and truly are, but some of the realists

In a recent exchange on Twitter with my London based friend Max Keiser (www.maxkeiser.com) I suggested that the monetary upstart known as bitcoin is merely the latest evolution of the tulip mania speculation.  The Economist describes the tulip mania: “Tulpenwoede” (tulip madness) resulted in big

You don’t get something for nothingYou can’t have freedom for freeYou won’t get wiseWith the sleep still in your eyesNo matter what your dreams might be Rush: Geddy Lee, Neil Peart This past Friday, watching Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben

In the days before Christmas, Mary Williams Walsh of The New York Times wrote several important news stories about the bankruptcy of the City of Detroit.  She described how the nation’s largest banks have used the bogey man known as

Last week, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) told the financial markets what they wanted to hear, namely that the Federal Reserve is going to moderate massive purchases of Treasury debt and mortgage securities. The news of the “tapering” of

As the year draws to a close, it is worth returning to the US housing sector to see what some of the better analysts are saying about home prices in 2014 and beyond.  Generally speaking, most observers believe that US

My friend and fellow monetary historian James Rickards has written an important new book, “The Death of Money: The Coming Collapse of the International Monetary System.”  Jim and I both worked together at Tangent Capital Partners in New York and

Earlier this week I published an interview on Zero Hedge with my friend and mentor David Kotok, founder of Cumberland Advisors, entitled “Bagehot & Deflation: Interview with David Kotok.”  The discussion generated a large amount of comment in the financial community, particularly regarding

There are many ways to lose money or wealth as a result of inflation. For most Americans, the most obvious type of inflation is the steady increase in the cost of living caused by reckless monetary policies followed by the

Just before the Thanksgiving holiday, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation released financial data for all federally insured banks as of the end of the third quarter of 2013.  The Quarterly Banking Profile, which is an important publication that provides a comprehensive summary

In my last post, “Washington & Wall Street: So Why Can’t We Prosecute the Banksters?,”  we started to get into some of the historical antecedents of financial regulation.  In this post let’s take the analysis a bit further and start

During the hearings last week regarding the nomination of Fed Vice Chairman Janet Yellen, the one thing you definitely heard nothing about was why the US government has not pursued fraud prosecutions against the officers and directors of the major

On Thursday Federal Reserve Board Vice Chairman Janet Yellen appears before the Senate Banking Committee to defend her nomination to succeed Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, who received the weakest approval ever from the Senate when he was confirmed in February

Last week, the Veterans Airlift Command held their annual dinner and fundraiser in San Diego, CA. A number of organizations that are involved in assisting veterans participated in the event.  For those not familiar, the Veterans Airlift Command is a

The initial public offering for Twitter (TWTR) came out Thursday.  The stock priced at $26 and subsequently rose as high as $50, then fell back down to a little less than $45.  Not bad for a company that has virtually

Last week, the Democrat controlled Senate failed to muster 60 votes to confirm the nomination of Rep. Mel Watt (D-NC) to be the new, permanent director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency.  The White House selected Watt to be the

The liberal segments of Congress and the Big Media are pounding away on the idea that “austerity” due to budget cuts is somehow behind the slow performance of the US economy.  Never mind that there is little evidence that the

President Obama and Congress continue to wrestle with competing ideas to fix America’s housing crisis, ranging from abolishing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to introducing new regulations for repairing the rickety mortgage-financing system years after it crashed. To understand the