Monetary System

Raghuram Rajan is a bloody good economist, that's who he is. Rajan, who succeeded Kenneth Rogoff at the International Monetary Fund as Chief Economist, is also a prescient voice of reason on any number of different subjects. Recently,…

Given the fact that this site is called Credit Writedowns, you would expect me to take a fairly skeptical view about the growing consensus regarding a rapid recovery in 2009. I do, in large part because I understand that banks face many…

Trolling the web today as is my wont, I happened across an interesting article about the Austrian finance company Immofinanz. It seems that Immofinanz got caught up in the Eastern European property market. Unfortunately, its investments…

It wasn't until I read about a massive writedown by a German bank associated with the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers that I started to connect the dots. But, there is a hidden flaw in our accounting system which accounts for some of the…

Morgan Stanley released a dismal earnings report one day after Goldman's. Obviously this is shaping up to a be a very bad quarter for financial institutions. Morgan's $2.2 billion loss was certainly less than Goldman's but very large…

This video from the 1930s is a timeless piece of work, giving an explanation of what inflation and deflation are and how they work. (hat tip Tim Iacono)

hat tip jka on economics UK

The U.S. Dollar got more bad news today when the Bank of England (BoE) decided to not follow the U.S. Federal Reserve's lead to a Zero Interest Rate Policy (ZIRP). The BoE was seen as the most likely to follow in the Fed's footsteps as i…

To my mind, lowering interest rates in the aftermath of an enormous credit bubble where institutions have just destroyed $1 trillion in capital is wrong. It distorts lending decisions such that yet more money will eventually be lent out…

Goldman has done exceptionally well compard to other investment banks through this credit crisis. However, many were predicting a stunning turn of fortune for the latest reporting period. And stunning it was as Goldman lost a mammoth $2.1…