Credit Writedowns

I wrote a blurb on the Georgia-Russia struggle on my blog. But I wanted to add a blurb here from Mikhail Gorbachev's Op-Ed in today's Washington Post. His viewpoint stands in great contrast to the punderati of Washington. Framed in a real…

If Georgia or Ukraine were a part of NATO, we would be willing to go to war for them as that is what NATO means. Think about it: Russia attacks the Ukraine or Georgia and the U.S. and its allies go to war to stop the Russian aggression.…

According to Seattle-based Zilliow, nearly one-third of U.S. home buyers who bought in the last five years are now underwater. A full 45% of those who bought at the peak in 2006 have negative equity in their homes. Negative equity makes…

While the finance world is concerned with its own problems of writedowns and deflating asset prices, a proxy war of great importance is being fought in the country of Georgia. It has everything to do with both a Russo-American power…

The Financial Times Deutschland is reporting that China and Iraq want to revive a Saddam-era oil contract between the two nation that is worth billions of dollars. The contract, an obvious economic coup for China, secures Beijing…

My Commentary: The lead story today is about UBS and it.s $5.1 billion in writedowns and what this means for the financial system going forward. When one combines the downbeat assessment by UBS management regarding Q3 and Q4 with the…

UBS reported a loss of 358 million Swiss Francs ($332 million) after writing down a further $5.1 billion in debt.In my post yesterday, I said the market expected as much. But, more importantly UBS has confirmed plans also mentioned in…

Hello readers!I have some admin news to update you on. A few months ago, I migrated my site over to a new URL and I have not updated my RSS feed to reflect the new address. I know that many of you look at my blog via RSS Feeds or e-mail.…

I wish it were not so, but it is increasingly obvious that every part of the financial sector in the United States is infected by this menacing plague of credit losses and writedowns. Now it comes to light that the five biggest U.S. credit…

Let's hope the UBS earnings report is not as bad as Merrill. If you recall, Citi, Merrills and UBS are the three worst offenders when it comes to writedowns. Given the recent asset sales by RBS and Merrill, one would expect to see some…