By Patrick Killelea, Wed Jun 3 2009

House prices will keep falling in most places because those prices are still dangerously high compared to incomes and rents. Banks say a safe mortgage is a maximum of 3 times the buyer’s yearly income. Landlords say a safe price is a maximum of 15 times the tenant’s yearly rent. Yet in coastal areas, both those safety rules are still being violated. Buyers are still borrowing 6 times their income, and sellers are still asking 30 times annual rent, even after …

Sun-Times Media Group Inc. cut about 140 jobs companywide last week as it tries to trim costs during its bankruptcy reorganization.
Read the whole story: Crain’s Chicago Business
Filed by Ben Goldberger

Warren’s the chief watchdog for the 700 billion TARP fund. Unfortunately, she has no real power, but it’s still nice to see a government official say not just some of the right things, but almost all of the right things. Talk of how the US is following Japan’s path is finally everywhere (myself and a few others have been talking about it for years, and started really beating the drums last year). Here’s Elizabeth:
Warren, a Harvard law professor and chair of the congressional oversight committee monitoring the …

The extraordinary risk-management discipline that developed out of the writings of the University of Chicago’s Harry Markowitz in the 1950s produced insights that won several Nobel prizes in economics. It was widely embraced not only by academia but also by a large majority of financial professionals and global regulators.
But in August 2007, the risk-management structure cracked. All the sophisticated mathematics and computer wizardry essentially rested on one central premise: that the enlightened self-interest of owners and managers of financial institutions would lead them to maintain a sufficient buffer against insolvency …