January 2009

This comes from Chapter VIII of Galbraith's classic volume, "The Great Crash 1929." Given the recent announcement of fraud at Satyam in India and the monstrous Madoff scandal, it is a quote and concept to remember.

ADP, the payroll data company, has shown that the United States is going to see an even larger loss of jobs in December than we saw in November when the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases its figures this Friday. The number ADP put out is…

If you have been having difficulty accessing the site, my apologies.  The site has been down for part of  the day both yesterday and today.  We are working to fix the problem.  As a result, we have revered back to the old look and feel…

The investing world started the new year in a really positive mood. Us, stocks for example are up nearly 20% from their 2008 lows just two months ago. However, there is a lot of work to be done as evidenced by the news flow from the real…

Update 07 Mar 2009: I am re-posting this in light of increasing evidence that Obama's stimulus bill was in fact too small. Paul Krugman has a good post today called "One-sided debate," which reminds us he made that argument but was…

The Ukraine-Russia row over natural gas has escalated to a new high. Now, state-owned Gazprom has completely cut off supplies to Europe through the Ukrainian transit route. It still remains unclear what the ultimate aim of the Russians…

The data are in for house prices in the United Kingdom and they are not good. Prices have now fallen 18% from their peak in October 2007 according to the latest Nationwide Building Society survey. They were down a massive 2.5% in December…

Every time I write a links post this year, I fear getting the year wrong and writing 2008. It is hard to believe we have a new year already. It has kicked off with a bang too. Did you see treasuries yesterday? They were bloody awful.…

FT Alphaville, one of my favorite blog sites, has the latest on Glencore and its credit default swaps. They are exploding to the downside for firms issuing insurance against Glencore's default. Here's Alphaville's chart: