We’re almost ready to put a price tag on the toxic stuff

By Geert De Lombaerde Posted on October 5, 2009 at 10:38 am

In the long-ago days before TARP, there was talk of PPIP, a plan to use government cash to clear the worst of the bad assets off banks’ books. More than a year later, the pieces are in place for investment firms to pool some newly raised capital with federal money and begin buying mortgage-backed securities.

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Tags: bailout, banking, distressed assets, government stimulus, investment management, loan losses, Public-Private Investment Program, public-private partnerships  

‘A public-private prison symbiosis’

By Geert De Lombaerde Posted on November 20, 2008 at 11:23 pm

Vanderbilt researchers – funded initially by CCA – say states benefit financially from competition between public and private prison operators.

“…[From] 1999 to 2004, the overall average cost of housing a prisoner in a public facility grew by almost 5 percent in states without a private prison population. States that had some prisoners in privately run prisons had their average cost go up less than 2 percent.”

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Tags: academic research, Corrections Corp. of America, Jim Blumstein, Mark Cohen, prison management, public-private partnerships, Vanderbilt University