Monetary System

By now, you are familiar with the carry trade, where one borrows in one's own currency in order to invest in higher yielding foreign assets, often times with significant leverage. The Japanese were famous for making this trade in…

I have not posted all day because I have been spending most of the day doing site maintenance -- importing the data from the credit crisis timeline into a database, which will make it a lot easier to update, backfill and make changes to the…

This week, I can practically repeat what I said last week verbatim - so, I will.Writedowns continued unabated despite the easing global credit markets. While we should see a bear market rally due to this easing, the ill effects of a global…

If you recall, I have been warning for a while now that hedge funds were going to take a beating. There are many progosticators out there including Nouriel Roubini which feel that many hedgie bankruptcies are on the way. Below is a…

PNC, down only 13% this year-to-date, very good for a bank stock, is acquiring beleaguered Ohio bank NCC for $5.5 billion. The price represents a huge discount to the prevailing market price before open today and NCC was down 34% in early…

This morning in an e-mail exchange with Marshall Auerback, I questioned why the U.S. Dollar was rising so precipitously. I do understand much of this has to do with a need to refinance dollar-denominated borrowing by international…

Writedowns continued unabated despite the easing global credit markets. While we should see a bear market rally due to this easing, the ill effects of a global recession and new concerns in emerging markets and Asia will cause writedowns…

I love Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase's CEO. He really tells it like it is. At last quarter's earnings call, he called a spade a spade and said "prime looks terrible" in reference to prime mortgage loans. This quarter his quote is even…

Inflation was unchanged from the previous month in September, bringing the annual rate of inflation down to 4.9%. While the inflation rate is still elevated, the drop in oil and commodity prices combined with lower consumer spending is…

My last post's title "The panic is over" was a bit cheeky given the Dow was down an astounding 700-some points today. The crux of the matter is continued economic weakness due to slowing consumer spending. And that means more writedowns…