Grant: ‘This Time Is Different’ for U.S. Consumers

July 3, 2008 3:30am by

James Grant, editor of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, and Brad Hintz, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. and a former chief financial officer of Lehman Brothers Inc., talk about the outlook for U.S. consumer spending, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s call for regulatory changes that would allow financial firms to fail without threatening market stability and the outlook for brokerages

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  1. Paul Gignesi commented on Jul 3

    Barry,
    why do you keep on sending out these videos when we (Mac users) can’t hear a word they are saying?

    Paul

  2. JustinTheSkeptic commented on Jul 3

    And the band played on – “Guns and Water.” Great Idea! Who the hell are they trying to kid that they aren’t scarred as hell?

  3. Barry Ritholtz commented on Jul 3

    Because they are seminal.

    And while I’m a Mac user at home, that does not affect the content choices I make.

    I can sometimes make the Bloomberg video work on a Mac — but its spotty.

    More people need to complain to Bloomberg about this.

  4. dblwyo commented on Jul 3

    Barry – this is excellent by two astute observers. Grant is always Grant of course but having heard Hintz here and there now he’s very sharp and understands how business works as a business. What’s the story behind his Lehman departure to analyst (?) migration. Recommend careful thought to all your readers on this. A main Hintz take-away would be rounds 2+ of financial industry impacts plus a long, shallow U-recovery. BUT Grant makes a really scary, fundamental point – a change in the equation of consumer behavior.

  5. Groty commented on Jul 3

    Jim Grant on the definition of a bear market: “When the alarm rings, you don’t want to get out of bed.”

    I like it.

  6. Mike in Nola commented on Jul 3

    Paul Gignesi

    You need to gt bootcamp and Vista so you can see what the plebians are seeing :)

  7. Mike in Nola commented on Jul 3

    BTW, saw this when it was first on and thought they made a lot of sense. It’s why I watch Bloomberg instead of CNBC if there’s a choice. They generally don’t shout down people who are cheerleaders.

  8. Mike in Nola commented on Jul 3

    oops. Meant “aren’t cheerleaders”. Sorry to clutter up the thread. Need to finish my coffee and wake up before posting.

  9. michael schumacher commented on Jul 3

    Saw this last night…..Grant is a realist…Hintz is an apologist.

    Several times Hintz could have embraced reality but choose not to. Instead sticking to “maybe”, “could be” or other very vague notions of a position.

    I especially liked how Hintz dodged the question about effective interest rates (to be fair P. Fox broke to a commercial and never brought it up again)….

    But he never answered it…

    Ciao
    MS

  10. Jim D commented on Jul 3

    It’s not just Mac, btw.

    Doesn’t work on Linux either.

    Oh well, now I know I can ignore their site for the most part. Too bad – I’ve been getting into the Bloomberg podcasts, they’re not bad.

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