Economy

David Rosenberg was out over the past week with some pretty large numbers supporting the thesis that strategic defaults are driving retail sales. In his daily piece last Friday, he said: To repeat, what has driven consumer spending in…

I just posted on Goldman's fraud charges this morning with my article "SEC Charges Goldman Sachs With Fraud; May The Perp Walks Begin." Below are my (now updated) thoughts on the case having seen more of the information…

From the SEC: The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged Goldman, Sachs & Co. and one of its vice presidents for defrauding investors by misstating and omitting key facts about a financial product tied to subprime…

We know that JPMorgan is not substantially increasing lending anytime soon. And we also know that banks are recapitalizing courtesy of a steep yield curve and near zero rates, what I would call free money.  What I didn't know is how…

We are now hearing former Merrill Lynch CEO Stan O'Neal's side of the story for the first time since he resigned in October 2007. In a story by William Cohan in Fortune Magazine, O'Neal paints a picture of Merrill's fall from grace that at…

Vicky Ward, author of "The Devil's Casino: Friendship, Betrayal, and the High Stakes Games Played Inside Lehman Brothers," told Bloomberg that prosecutors need to get going if we are going to get any answers regarding why Lehman…

JPMorgan Chase had a blowout quarter for earnings. We're talking earnings of $3.3 billion for the quarter here.  That's up over 50% from last year's already high $2.1 billion. Does that signal an increase in lending? No. If you read…

I hadn't intended to write this post, but I caught the back end of a lot of chatter about the Swedish banking crisis response and needed to set the record straight on what actually happened in Sweden. Andrew Ross Sorkin wrote what I would…

Just yesterday, a Special Investigation Commission report was released in Iceland which criticized the handling of the country's top three banks and the crisis that ensued when they collapsed. Seven top officials were said to have acted…

I agree with Feldstein that a double dip is a risk (a much larger risk than many believe).  However, this presupposes that we are in technical recovery, one I believe began last summer. Also see Stuck in the Middle from Tim Duy's…