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Germany: Inflation tames retail sales
Bloomberg News reported that German retail sales for April were disappointing for the second month in a row. Retail sales growth is negative in Germany, adjusted for inflation.The reason: inflation. Consumers in Germany are losing…
The Dollar
The U.S. Dollar (USD) seems to have stabilized against most major floating currencies. This includes the British Pound, The Euro, The Canadian, Aussie and New Zealand Dollar, the Swiss Franc and the Japanese Yen. However, many market…
Another writedown risk: Chapter 7 Bankruptcy
The risks going forward for financial institutions and their capital base are large and growing. The blog CalculatedRisk has reported on yet another story that should give chills to bankers. This one is very significant: Chapter 7…
New Writedown Risk: Alt-A
The bloggers over at Calculated Risk have reported on a story making the rounds in the Internet. This story involves S&P's downgrade of Alt-A Residential Mortgage Backed Securities (RMBSs). The crux of the matter is that S&P…
Chart of the day: consumer credit growth
UPDATE: The latest chart on U.S. consumer credit growth is here. I have been focusing on debt as a primary contributor to the slump the U.S. is experiencing. We've seen skyrocketing Debt-to-GDP and Mortgage Debt. Now, I want to look at…
UK housing prices down a record
MarketWatch is reporting today that Nationwide has said that UK home prices are down a record amount.House prices fell for the seventh consecutive month, dropping 2.5% from April, and were 4.4% lower than they were in May 2007, Nationwide…
Regionals have CRE and Construction exposure
I am wary of regional banks for good reason. KeyCorp came out with a disastrous earnings report yesterday and was promptly whacked by the market. The regionals have way to much exposure to commercial real estate (CRE) and construction…
Regionals are exposed to credit crisis
The US regional banks are certainly the next set of financial institutions in the US that are going to get hit by the credit crisis. While these banks did not have significant exposure to the CDOs and RMBSs and other types of derivative…
Case-Shiller shows home price plunge
The S and P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index for the U.S. housing market came out yesterday and the news was not good. MarketWatch said: Home prices in 20 major U.S. metropolitan areas have dropped a record 14.4% in the past year, Standard…
Chart of the day: OFHEO House Price Index
Although I prefer the S&P/Case-Shiller House Price Index to look at U.S. house prices (see residential property posts), the OFHEO index has more data, going back to 1975 (instead of 1987 as the 10-city Case-Shiller does). Ultimately,…