Markets

France and Germany have the greatest exposure to Greece and their banks are expected to be the one’s with the lion’s share of the losses in the voluntary debt exchange deal. Here is a chart from the BBC below, detailing the exposure to…

The Bank of Japan held a private briefing with a small group of analysts from leading financial institutions in their NY rep office. The Director-General of the Research and Statistics Department led the presentation. This column…

Economic growth warning signs are evident all around in recent data from the US, Europe and China. This should mean negative earnings surprises by Q3 earnings season.

"Bloomberg Risk Takers" profiles Michael Burry, the former hedge-fund manager who predicted the housing market’s plunge, in video.

It is difficult for companies to cope with the competitive implications of the persistent strength of the Swiss franc. By the OECD calculations, the Swiss franc is the most over-valued currency in its universe near 45% over -valued against…

Contagion in the sovereign debt crisis has already spread to Spain and Italy. David Blanchflower believes it may spread yet further to France. On Bloomberg, Blanchflower led off saying this would not be surprising, pointing to the dithering…

I decided to look at what President Bush’s Council of Economic Advisors (CEA) were saying in their annual reports for 2005-2007 about the massive real estate bubble, epidemic of accounting control fraud and mortgage fraud, the resultant…

Something interesting is being played out. Margin traders--the famed Mrs Watanabe-- at the Tokyo Futures Exchange--have amassed a large short yen position. There are about 900k short yen contracts as of today and about 364k are short yen…

It turns out that China is not willing to pay whatever it has to for energy and metal resources. Several resource deals have faltered in recent months, indicating an increasingly choosy Chinese perspective on energy and metal acquisitions.…

One thing I like about the Fed Chairman is that he speaks in understandable prose, unlike his predecessor. Why did everyone think the Fed will ride to the rescue? It’s wishful thinking.