Readings today

- Stiglitz Says U.S. Is Paying for Failure to Nationalize Banks (Bloomberg):
Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said the world’s biggest economy is suffering because of the U.S. government’s failure to nationalize banks during the financial crisis.
“We have this very strange situation today in America where we have given banks hundreds of billions of dollars and the president has to beg the banks to lend and they refuse,” Stiglitz said. “What we did was the wrong thing. It has weakened the economy and has increased our deficit, making it more difficult for the future.”

- John Paulson Making Big New Bet on Gold (Wall Street Journal): John Paulson, who scored about $20 billion of profits between 2007 and early 2009 wagering against the housing market and financial companies, is launching a hedge fund dedicated to buying up shares of gold miners and other bullion-related investments, according to investors.

- The benefits of quantitative easing have flowed to Wall Street: "The benefit of quantitative easing has essentially flowed into Wall Street, into investment banks, into the banking sector but it hasn't flowed into the typical household in the US. Unemployment is still horrible at the present time with a lot of people being either unemployed or under employed. As a result, we have a very strange economy. We have booming financial markets, but at the same time the average household – the man on the street is basically suffering." (Marc Faber)