January 2009

As I write this, stock markets in the U.S. are in their final hour of a rather poor session. Selling seems to have been brought on by Microsoft's announcement that it is cutting jobs en masse for the first time ever. If you recall, Fred…

As this deepest of recessions takes hold, an increasing number of countries are seeing outbreaks of civil unrest. First it was Greece. Later, we saw unrest in the Baltics in Riga and Vilnius. Now, Iceland is experiencing the same. These…

When the Bush Administration gave banks money under the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), it was not a complete freebie. The government has received preferred shares in many institutions. This shares pay dividends to the government…

This article is from special guest contributor Steve Sildon, Senior Editor for CreditCardAssist.com, where he provides tips and advice for business owners on the strategic use of short-term debt and credit cards for small business…

This past week, jobless claims settled in at a level near 600,000 after a few weeks of decline due largely to seasonal adjustments. Jobless claims were 589,000 while continuing claims were 4,607,000.

The need to bailout banks for their aggressive lending in central and eastern Europe is becoming ever more apparent. An Austrian bank has taken the lead in getting a consortium of banks together to lobby the European Union for bailout…

This post from January 2009 explains why banks do not increase lending capacity when uncertainty about the level of existing loan losses already on their balance sheet makes them worry about future loan losses. Credit wariness will be the…

Yesterday was both an historic and eventful day. In the United States, we were celebrating the inauguration of a new President. I did my part over the past few days to bolster the economy by going to a number of parties and balls and…

Louise Yamada is one of Wall Street's foremost technical analyst. She is quite bearish and thinks the Dow Jones Industrial Average could go to 6000. Her advice: sell stocks.

As the financial industry further unraveled yesterday, Mathieu Robbins of the Irish Indendent asked a worthwhile question: Was RBS the idiot company of all-time in buying ABN Amro at the top of the market? Robbins says no and offers up…