Economy

When we think about outsourcing, we usually think about Call centers in India or manufacturing jobs in China. Well, what about automatic cashiers?I went to the local CVS (Shoppers Drug Mart or Boots for Canadian and British readers) this…

Below are the latest writedown stories from the web that I have seen. For the full timeline of news, visit my credit crisis timeline. Bloomberg recently updated their tally of writedowns to arrive at $503.8 Billion to date. That is on…

The Beijing Olympic games are supposed to be China's coming out cotillion. As the west struggles with deleveraging and recession, China wants to make a statement that it has arrived. The games have gone off remarkably well and most…

Back in May, I showed you a chart of Total U.S. Debt which demonstrated that the United States was an increasingly indebted country. This chart was for all domestic debt minus financials and it topped out at about 225% of GDP. Below is…

U.S. jobless claims were down 12,000 this week to 430,000. However, the 4-week average increased to 445,750 and is now 125,750 higher than a year ago. Over the past 4 or 5 weeks, claims have spiked up in part due to the extension of…

Lehman Brothers is obviously desperate to avoid Bear Stearns' fate. The FT is reporting that Lehman held secret talks with foreign investors to sell up to 50% of the company. Previously, I thought one investor might be the Korea…

Apparently, Lehman Brothers was looking to strike a deal with a Korean Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) for a whopping $5 billion, but the deal fell through -- this according to the NY Post.Lehman Brothers' embattled Chief Executive Dick Fuld…

Talk about ugly, American Home Mortgage, an outfit which went bust two days before the credit crunch hit a year ago, is now liquidating. We knew equity holders were going to get zippo, nada, zilch, but what about creditors of the mortgage…

Kenneth Rogoff, the Harvard Professor and former IMF Chief Economist shares my view that another large U.S. financial institution will go bust. I predicted this will happen before the end of 2008. He gives no specific date, but he does go…

Andrew Smithers is an economic commentator whose book 'Valuing Wall Street' I highly recommend. He is another market economist who shares my view that a 'Buy and Hold' Strategy is not necessarily the best. But he also has an economic…