Economy

Argentina too has a government statistics problem. Their new inflation index is seen as unbelievable.(see FT article here.)

In the wake of downgrades from AAA to AA status, MBIA has pulled support for its bond insurance subsidiary. In a letter to shareholders, CEO Jay Brown said:"We confirmed to the market today that we will not be making capital contributions…

The U.S. Department of Labor just released the weekly report for unemployment insurance claims. Initial claims were 384,000, while continuing claims rose to 3.139 million. The 4-week average moved up to 3,099,250. This is 593,000 more…

The following are the links regarding the global credit crunch that have been recently added to the Credit Crisis Timeline. The full timeline is accessible hereLatest Additions2008 06 02 Wall Street May Face $460 Bln in Losses, Goldman…

In April, I wondered aloud where HBOS was in this crisis in a post called "Where's HBOS?". Now, we know they are not immune to the problems infecting global finance.The Guardian has reported on the difficulty HBOS is having raising money…

It looks like the BofA-Countrywide deal is still on. In fact, BofA is making room for some of the Countrywide executives in its own executive suite. I reckon we will look back on this deal as a very bad call by BofA.Bank of America Corp.…

You know, the Federal Reserve stopped publishing M3 for some strange reason back on 23 Mar 2006.At the time, they said the following:M3 does not appear to convey any additional information about economic activity that is not already…

I have been reading the Spanish press a lot recently to see what is happening in the Spanish property market. On the one hand, the country is transfixed over a strike by truck drivers (link in Spanish) that has left Spain's major cities…

McClatchy has an article out today showing that the credit crunch is hitting all sorts of consumer credit now. The crisis that began as one 'contained' to subprime, now has branched out into auto loans, credit card debt, student loans,…

This is what the recently released retail sales data look like over a longer time-frame.