Economy

This from the National Post.The note from Blackmont analyst Brad Smith followed news late on Friday that Moody's Investors Service had downgraded XL Capital Assurance. CIBC has exposure to XL Capital since the bond insurer provides it with…

Count me in the crowd of Civil Libertarians who are perplexed by Barack Obama's move to the center and rejection of basic civil liberties. He has come out in favor of a bill on wiretapping proposed by the Bush Administration that gives…

The Washington Post has a story on regional and healthy banks that I highly recommend. Essentially, we are past the first wave of writedowns and are moving into phase two where it won't be about derivatives and RMBS's as much as underlying…

Handelsblatt is reporting that, for the first time in the company's history, revenues are down at Aldi, the formidable grocery chain that chased Wal-Mart out of Germany. That's pretty amazing.The company that made its founders, Karl and…

It's about time! I've been saying this day was sure to come and it couldn't arrive soon enough. After pouring over $300 billion of good money after bad, investors are perhaps saying enough is enough.The Wall Street Journal is reporting…

DateTime (ET)StatisticForActualBriefing ForecastMarket ExpectsPriorRevised FromJun 2410:00 AMConsumer ConfidenceJun-57.057.057.2-Jun 258:30 AMDurable OrdersMay-0.3%0.0%-0.5%-Jun 2510:00 AMNew Home SalesMay-520K510K526K-Jun 2510:30 AMCrude…

Rumors are that Citigroup is also going to have another big writedown.Citigroup Inc., in the latest sign of bloodletting on Wall Street, is set this week to embark on an aggressive round of layoffs within its investment-banking division,…

A friend from the UK visited me at the weekend last week. As we drove by the local Exxon, and he spotted the $4.30 marker for regular unleaded, he commented "Petrol is cheap here." Really?Well, in the UK, he said he was paying £1.40 a…

Last Monday, I warned of the ill effects that flooding would have on our pocketbooks in the post Floods increase the chances of inflation. Unfortunately, we have seen renewed flooding in the Midwest this week as well. The total impact…

Now that it's come to light that Barclays went hat in hand to Japan to recoup some of the losses from its credit writedowns, one begins to understand that the Japanese banks are in a much better position today than their western…