The Federal Reserve Finally Tries to Fight A Bubble…In the Price of Farmland

(Originally published in Inflation Watch) Under Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve was known to stand on the sidelines while bubbles in asset prices grew and grew. Greenspan had a lot more faith in the Federal Reserve’s ability to mop up the subsequent mess caused by a bubble’s collapse than in its ability to stop a … Read more

Shorts Retreat Ahead of Earnings Warning for Lender Processing Services, Puts Soar

(This is an excerpt from an article I originally published on Seeking Alpha. Click here to read the entire piece.) After discovering that shorts ramped ahead of earnings for Research In Motion (RIMM), I decided to check in again on the short interest in Lender Processing Services (LPS)… {snip} Source: NASDAQ.com So LPS caught bulls … Read more

Reckless Endangerment: Financial Risks Are Even Bigger Now

Gretchen Morgenson and Josh Rosner wrote Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon to describe how the recovery from the financial panic and recession have resolved little and have left the economy at tremendous risk for an even larger crisis. Aaron Task interviews the authors on Yahoo! Finance’s Daily Ticker. … Read more

Visa Follows Blaze Mobile and Enables Mobile Transactions

Last week, CNBC interviewed Visa (V) CEO and Chairman Joseph Saunders. The title “Building the Digital Wallet” caught my attention because I am invested in Blaze Mobile, a start-up whose main product, Blaze Mobile Wallet, enables mobile payments, banking, and ticketing. Visa invested in mobile payment start-up Square in April, 2011, and the company’s plan … Read more