2009

Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) are losing money hand over fist, which should leave one wondering whether their appetite for Western assets will continue to bolster those markets. Funds in Asia and the Middle East have been hit by a…

Eastern European currencies crumble as fears of debt crisis grow - Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Telegraph CDS report: Emerging exposures hurt banks - FT Alphavile 'Drunk' Japan minister to resign - BBC News Schwarzenegger Prepares to Layoff…

If you recall, a few months ago there was a lot of speculation in Washington about Paul Volcker being named a 'car czar' to deal with the problem with the Big Three automakers. That idea has fallen by the wayside. President Obama has named…

California's problems are well-known. They have been in the making for sometime. When I predicted a U.S. state would go bust this year, California was very much on my mind. But, frankly, Kansas was nowhere on my radar screen. Now…

Danielle, a European reader, recently asked what is going on in the European Union regarding mark-to-market. Basically, the EU has already relaxed mark-to-market requirements as an outgrowth of the market turbulence surrounding Lehman…

Overnight, the Japanese government released figures for Q4 2008 GDP that pointed to a depression-like fall in the Japanese economy. GDP contracted 3.3% from Q3, or 12.7% using the U.S. convention of annualizing those numbers. This is the…

The man who recently uttered the D-word about the global economy tells all to Charlie Rose.  The video is from this past Friday.

On February 6th, I started a poll asking whether the global economy was experiencing a recession or a depression. In the interim, I have tried to stay neutral on the issue. Now it is time to close out the poll. Below you can add your…

Below is my translation from an excerpt in the Swiss newspaper NZZ: In 2008, the lucrative business with loans to U.S. students came to an abrupt end. Today, UBS sits on paper that could still be worth $8.4 billion - or less. The collapse…

After Iceland collapsed and went into Depression, there were a number of reports in the press regarding countries with outsized financial sectors. The worry was that the collapse of Iceland was not an isolated incident, but rather a…