Hi, I am Olivier Garret, this week’s editor of The Room. What a rough week out there. My mind wanders as I drive at a crawl (I am not known to be a patient driver) behind a car full of “leaf peepers,” as Vermonters affectionately call the tourists who invade our state every autumn. I wonder how my friend David Galland is doing in Portugal, sipping the local wines with no access to his emails? It may be the worst week to be without market news -- or perhaps not… Hopefully David is enjoying himself while celebrating an old friend’s birthday with a group of other newsletter editors and industry peers. Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Paulson and Fed Chairman Bernanke are not exactly having a day at the beach as they try to solve our nation’s problems. By the way, this past week, it seemed to me that Lehman drew the wrong lottery number while AIG appears to have hit the jackpot. I wonder how many other “private enterprises” will be lucky enough to get bailed out at taxpayers’ expense in the next few months: WaMu, Wachovia, and hundreds of other financial institutions, GM, Ford, Delta, United?...
Filed under: Subprime Loans, commodities, Gold, Ben Bernanke, Recession, China, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Henry Paulson, Bud Conrad, Poland, AIG, Panama