bbowen7

Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

There are several separate questions in the Chinese tire dispute, and much of the initial reaction doesn't involve much factual information on any of them:

1. Beyond anecdotes, is there any data showing that Chinese tires are unsafe? If so, the Consumer Products Safety Commission - or some other such group - should be in the lead.

2. Have the Chinese violated WTO rules on fair trade? TBD.

3. How can we and the Chinese government reach an understanding of how to migrate toward a balanced, sustainable trade relationship? If this is an opening shot with that objective, perhaps it is a good thing. If it is just a random data point, it may make good politics for the short run, but damage things in the long run. Lets hope that the administration "gets it".

Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

So, who would invest in CitiBank as junior partners to Barack? Some case can be made for banks like Wells Fargo, but whatever logic can there be to the government's plan to match private funds - what private funds? The folks who invested with Bernie and Stanford must be broke or smarter by now.

Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

Today's big news is the meeting of Obama with the group of economic leaders - and his first opportunity to express his views as a manager, rather than a campaigner. Particularly, whether he will take on Nancy Pelosi's decision to lead on the bailout of Detroit and the development of another stimulus package. Nature abhors a vacuum, the Bush administration is AWOL (perhaps thankfully), and this is the first test of Obama's ability / desire to provide balanced leadership. An optimist would hope that is why he selected Rahm Emanuel - to take on Pelosi.