February 2011

If you thought this year was off to a challenging start for investors, fasten your seatbelts. March could very well turn out to be the most important month of the year. This does not mean there is easy money to be made or low-hanging fruit…

Daniel Yergin is the author of the Pulitzer-Prize winning book 'The Prize', a stellar run through of the oil industry that is on Credit Writedowns' recommended reading list. Below is a twenty-minute interview of Yergin by the Wall Street…

As part of the US policy response to the global crisis, the Dodd-Frank Financial Reform Act calls for regulators to identify systemically risky financial firms – the sort that took the US financial crisis global. But how to identify these…

 Speech by Janet L. Yellen, Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve, at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business U.S. Monetary Policy Forum, New York, New York - February 25, 2011.  Cross post from Global Economic Intersection. The…

Earlier in the week, David Rosenberg wrote that he is bullish on energy stocks due to the exogenous shock that tensions in the Middle East are creating in the energy complex. However, this is not a bullish story for overall U.S. growth or…

Below is a film clip from the Oscar-nominated picture, 'Gasland'. The film on the effect of natural gas drilling on country landowners is up for best documentary tomorrow night. Also see Industry tried to get "Gasland" out of…

Retail sales have recovered to pre-recession levels, but not when adjusted for population growth. With that considered sales are only at 1999 levels and less than half of the recession's decline has been recovered.

Bill Fleckenstein was back talking to Dylan Ratigan about the source of rising oil prices. (See the last Fleckenstein video here). Clearly, supply constraints and increased demand in emerging markets play the central role in creating a…

The upshot of all this is that oil prices will probably remain high and could very well rise significantly even from current levels. For the U.S., studies indicate that every $1 rise in the price of a barrel of oil is about equivalent to a…

U.S. exports of sea containers are up 13% YoY. Imports too are up 13% YoY. This is indicating a growing trade balance deficit, since exports exceed imports.