Credit Writedowns

Financial News Soros: Oil Is a Bubble, But Crash Not Imminent Toll Brothers (TOL): Another Lousy Quarter, But At Least Bob Toll Stopped Blaming Media Merrill's Rosenberg: Stagflation Talk is "Utter Nonsense"…

John Mauldin is an economic pundit I have been following for a number of years. He not only writes a weekly newsletter that is very informative but he also has many guest writers of equal note. Yesterday, he had Michael Levitt of HCM…

The Globe & Mail is reporting that Lehman Brothers might have to go back to the capital raising trough again in order to shore up a leveraged and risky balance sheet. In the face of yesterday's credit downgrade by S&P, this sounds…

Global financial institutions are deleveraging because they can't build enough equity capital any other way except by going to Asian and Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds, cap in hand. So, the Fed and the Bank of England (BoE) have…

The term deleveraging is one bandied about a lot in the press recently. But, what does it actually mean? De-leveraging is the process by which financial institutions and investors reduce the relative size of their assets to equity ratio.…

Has Oil Production Reached a 'De Facto' Peak? Read It Here First: States' Impact on Economy States and Cities Impact On GDP Taleb's Harsh Assessment of Bankers, Economists, and the Fed Housing Woes Hit Affluent Middle-Class…

This just in from the Globe & Mail via Reuters:Standard & Poor's in a sweeping move Monday that rocked markets cut ratings on a number of major U.S. securities firms including Lehman Brothers Inc. and said outlooks on the large U.S.…

Question: Could one see a bubble in housing back in 2005 when house prices were still rising? Well, to answer that question, I took the S&P/Case-Shiller Composite 10 Index and mapped it the rate of inflation. See, Robert Shiller, one…

Royal Bank of Canada joins the list of financial institutions sued by clients over the large losses associated with the credit crisis.The Globe & Mail reports:Royal Bank of Canada has been hit with a proposed class action lawsuit in New…

This is a story I caught over at Michael Panzner's site this morning. Apparently Paramax, a hedge fund, entered into a swap arrangement with UBS based on the value of a subprime CDO back in February 2007. Under the terms of the swap, the…