Credit Writedowns

News links for 13 May 2013

I am not a fan of quantitative easing or zero rates. I think that is clear from my posts over the past 4 years. Nevertheless, I do like to link out to posts that put QE and zero rates in a more favourable light because we need to get a…

Retail savers in the US are abandoning certificates of deposits (CDs). The amount of CDs outstanding that are $100K or smaller has been on a sharp decline since the recession and is now at the lowest level since the Fed began keeping track…

As Merrill's junk bond index yield crossed the historical low of 5% on Thursday, some senior Fed officials are clearly becoming uneasy. Corporate credit markets are entering bubble territory (see discussion) and up until recently very…

This is just a quick follow-up to the last post on debt deflationary dynamics in Europe and the contrast to policy in Japan. I think Yanis Varoufakis has it right that Europe is on the same path as Japan but just not as far along the path.…

When I see the chart for Euro zone NPLs and look at the numbers, I think debt deflation. And this is exactly the problem with the euro zone's policy mix.

News links for 10 May 2013

I have been arguing for several years that once China begins the adjustment process, which I expect to characterize the ten-year period of the current administration, growth rates must slow significantly. My expectation for long-term growth…

I keep going on and on about how mobile is where the technology industry is moving. So clearly the access/telecom end of that is going to be important. The T-mobile move to unbundle the handset subsidy from the telecom monthly fee is a bold…

Microsoft is getting a bit of black eye in the press due to its about face on the Ambitious Windows 8 platform change. While the unit numbers match up well against Windows 7, there has already been quite a bit of noise about how steep the…