May 2011

The creditors know that the game is up. All they can do is take as much as they can, as long as they can, pay themselves bonuses that are “free” from recapture by public prosecutors, and run to their offshore banking centers.

Apparently, the upcoming film on the credit crisis ‘Too Big To Fail’ can be boiled down in these 80 seconds of preview clips. Enjoy.

An unsustainable rise in debt is, for me, one of the key indicators that the investment-driven model has passed its useful life and is generating negative growth while posting positive growth numbers. This is why I spend so much time trying…

Greece is clearly insolvent. The Europeans should put a plan in place to deal with Greece and to reduce contagion. The contagion to Italy and Belgium is happening because of uncertainty and the inability to put forward a credible solution…

US dollar is broadly weaker as market sentiment builds on yesterday’s improvement. Official and unofficial views on Greece are not in short supply, but vary across a wide range. Germany may be stepping back from restructuring talk regarding…

Once divorce from the euro is complete, Germany will regain its fiscal freedom. This is itself something the Germans should celebrate, providing their government takes advantage of their newfound fiscal freedom. Remember, once it returns to…

While the tightening of global financial conditions is likely in part a trigger for the recent unwind of positioning, the de-leveraging of this extended positioning in equities, commodities and currencies, therefore, is the likely the cause…

Within the context of our Macro-Global Discretionary Managed Accounts Trading Program, we are bearish on European stock markets, and are becoming increasingly interested in the bearish side of the US equity market. We are bearish on bond…

I was on Headline, BNN’s midday show on financial news, talking to presenter Paul Waldie and fellow guest Jacquie McNish this past Wednesday. The big news then was LinkedIn (LNKD). The first guest, Bill Buhr of Morningstar, spoke to the…

You should notice that the title of this post is “make accounting gains” instead of “earned” because it is not clear at all that US banks earned $29 billion. After all, the FDIC has indicated that these accounting gains are driven by lower…