Rolfe Winkler

Fed loses its (first) appeal (Glovin/Van Voris, Bloomberg) Bloomberg is fighting the good fight. But there are many battles yet to wage in this legal war…

Cuomo probes pension “spiking” (Chon, WSJ) Looting, pure and simple.

Good news alert: Derivative credit exposure declines (OCC) It’s still too high, nor does this trend negate the need for tough derivatives regulation. The full report is here.

“We should take out the baseball bat on Paul Krugman” — Roach (Anstey/Li, Bloomberg) I don’t think Krugman’s off-base about China manipulating its currency. But he is dangerously wrong in advising Americans not to save…

Housing: price to rent ratio (Calculated Risk) House prices are falling again, though slowly. CR argues has data showing we’re closer to the bottom than the top.

Bair considers extending TAG (fdic.gov) In a speech today, Bair said FDIC is looking at extending the program that offers unlimited deposit insurance for non-interest bearing transaction accounts. It had been schedule to expire June 30. She also complained that the Dodd bill has loopholes that could make bailouts possible, in particular the Fed’s 13(3) emergency lending authority. Funny, the one big bailout loophole actually applies to FDIC, which the Dodd bill empowers to extend debt guarantees.

Reuters chart: U.S. home sales and the 30-year fixed rate (Culp, Reuters) Interesting chart, though it might be more precise to say that low mortgage rates aren’t sufficient to drive house prices up. They certainly provide support…

Bernie Madoff beat up in prison (Searcey/Efrati, WSJ) The incident was in December, but WSJ confirmed that, no, Bernie didn’t fall out of bed.

The world’s only immortal animal (Nelson, Yahoo)

Ultimate revenge? (Ashford, heraldsun)

Stick ‘em up…