June 2008

When was the last time you heard of a major U.S. home builder going bankrupt? It's been quite a while. Even though my focus right now is firmly fixed on financial institutions and mortgage lenders, I have a watchful eye on home builders.…

The FT reported today that Brazil, fattened by newly found oil reserves and a sky-high oil price, is getting into the Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) game. They are ready to fund $200 billion toward this project and have built up the currency…

Barry Ritholtz at the Big Picture is on to something. He has found A Perfect Recession Indicator. Since 1953, when year-over-year Non-Farm payrolls have gone negative, there has been a recession. This happened nine out of nine times for…

I have posted a few times on the problem surrounding an imminent writedown wave for commercial real estate (CRE) and construction loans in the US. A few days back, I had intended to post more about regionals. The Wall Street Journal had a…

The Sunday Telegraph is reporting yet another major Western bank is going cap in hand to sovereign wealth funds in order to stave off the inevitable crisis. This time its Barclays, Britain's third largest bank. At a time when RBS is…

I am a Euroscpetic. I admire the political will of Europe's grand designers in creating the Euro, but I have always felt that harmonisation would be a painful process fraught with tension - especially during economic downturns. And so it is…

Unfortunately this IS the real deal, Evander Holyfield -- you're losing your house. HousingWire is reporting that Evander Holyfield has become the second major celebrity to succumb to buckling home prices and financial difficulty this…

Latest Additions2008 05 26 UBS Falls After Saying More Mortgage Losses Possible2008 05 27 Banks, Brokers Cut 83,000 Jobs as Subprime Losses Mount: Table2008 05 28 Ambac shares hit record low after new disclosure2008 05 28 KeyCorp Slide…

The bad news in the financial sector keeps coming. Today, the news is about National City, a Cleveland-based regional bank in the US. The Wall Street Journal reports that the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has put Nat…

The U.S. economy is losing jobs fast. I will have more to say about this later, but I wanted to get out a link to Bloomberg's coverage of the 8:30 unemployment report. There's also a link to the report under the "Economic Data" section in…