Economy

Below is a partial list of April FDIC enforcement decisions and orders. I have only included cease-and-desist orders, prompt corrective action notices and termination of insurance orders as these are the signs of banking system distress.

Increasingly policy makers and investors are thinking about the consequences of the European financial crisis. The following focuses on two such consequences that are unlikely to appear on other lists.

Two notes from Andy Lees of UBS confirmed for me that a slowdown in China is underway and that developments in Europe are adding to the pressure.  In my view, this may mean a second-half reversal of the tightening we have seen in China…

Mohamed El-Erian, the CEO of PIMCO, the world's largest bond fund, says the new normal for industrial countries is low growth, re-regulation and deleveraging.

I expected this (hat tip Scott). Goldman Sachs is hoping to avoid the Securities and Exchange Commission’s charge of fraud by reaching a settlement on a lesser offence and agreeing to a fine of hundreds of millions of dollars, according…

The following is the weekly commentary from Comstock Partners, which makes the point that debt deleveraging is a multi-year event and that we are in the early stages of this deleveraging cycle. ...market reactions are widely out of…

Below is a video of the conversation on News Night last night in the UK about the European Credit Crisis. Participants were Hugh Hendry, Gillian Tett and Jeffrey Sachs.

Hilarious.

A month ago I showed you a bunch of charts which indicated that the US economy was slowing. The upshot of the charts was that the economy was going to stall in six to nine months and that stock prices would reflect this – and they have.…

Last spring and summer I wrote a series of articles on the bleak situation in Spain, centred on the Spanish Cajas (savings banks), the imploded housing market and the high level of unemployment. The gist of these posts was that Spain faced…