The Fed move means…
…an end to emergency measures—Bloomberg.
…an end to easy bank profits—the Times.
…the financial system is healing— WashPo.
…the beginning of further increases—big-shot strategist on CNBC via Clusterstock.
…virtually nothing—Bond king Bill Gross of Pimco on CNBC via Business Insider.
…more bouts of market-jarring uncertainty—WSJ .
…damage to risk currencies—WSJ blog.
… a return to normal—The Fed.
…but very little for households and businesses—the Fed, again.
One thing everyone agrees on. As the Journal put it: Fed Surprises Markets With an Increase in Bank Rate.
The Fed can still keep a secret.
–Reuters’s Matt Goldstein checks in with an interesting profile of the SEC official heading up a new agency task force charged with policing insider trading and other market abuses. The office is based in Philly, long considered an securities enforcement backwater but not so anymore.
—The Washington Post reports on the looming commercial real estate crisis, with a heavy dose of Elizabeth Warren to help tell the tale.
Nearly 3,000 community banks — 40 percent of the banking system — have a high proportion of commercial real estate loans relative to their capital, said Warren, whose committee issued a report on commercial real estate last week. “Every dollar they lose in commercial real estate is a dollar they can’t use for small businesses,” she said. Individuals — who saw their home values drop in the residential mortgage crisis — would not feel that kind of loss, but, Warren said, a large-scale failure would “throw sand into the gears of economic recovery.”
–From China, Reuters probes the many security hoops that suppliers go through to protect Apple’s secrets. The story’s been up for a couple of days, but should live on for a long time, considering what the Reuters team went through to get it.
Dean Starkman and Holly Yeager are CJR staffers. Starkman edits The Audit and is CJR’s Kingsford Capital Fellow; Yeager is CJR’s Peterson Fellow, covering fiscal and economic policy.As he stood on the public road taking photos of the front gate and security checkpoint, a guard shouted. The reporter continued snapping photos before jumping into a waiting taxi. The guard blocked the vehicle and ordered the driver to stop, threatening to strip him of his taxi license.
The correspondent got out and insisted he was within his rights as he was on the main road. The guard grabbed his arm. A second guard ran over, and with a crowd of Foxconn workers watching, they tried dragging him into the factory.
