2012

According to Austrian newspaper Der Standard, Austrian banks had 18.1 billion euros of exposure to foreign sovereign debt at the end of October. The debt to which the banks were most exposed were Polish, Italian, German and Hungarian…

Swiss daily newspaper Tagesanzeiger is reporting that Fitch, the ratings agency, is about to downgrade six European countries because of the sovereign debt crisis. The paper says that six euro countries were put on ratings review in…

Fortunately the ECB has deep pockets, and as I argue in this post, these will probably suffice to keep short term bond yields down to acceptable levels, and help the banks fund themselves and recapitalise. What the ECB’s LTRO’s won’t do is…

Dollar is trading on its back foot following solid EZ debt auctions; IMF seeks to increase lending capacity. The key issue today is whether North American players will sell into euro bounce; 20dma seen at $1.2875. UK Claimant count better…

Despite the ongoing hawkish rhetoric from the ECB, there are signs that they are getting it: The LTRO can't work, as you're essentially just swapping one liability for another one (albeit more long term in duration, therefore making it…

Sweden may have a bubble in its housing market. But now that housing prices have begun to fall, it is too late to deploy countermeasures.

This is grim. Bill Black has the analysis; he thinks this is a criminogenic environment of control frauds.

Check out the below graphic which shows General Government Deficit/Surplus as % of GDP on the Y axis, Government Debt as % of GDP on the X axis, and the Government Debt in Euros as the size of the bubble. Pretty cool!

There has been a lot of discussion about whether China's growth will slow enough to be considered a hard landing and what that would mean for the global economy and investors. Below is an account from Bloomberg featuring Goldman Sachs Chief…

Apple has released a report on working conditions in its suppliers’ factories. It highlights a form of control fraud that criminology has identified but rarely discussed. I write overwhelmingly about accounting control fraud because it…