Credit Writedowns

An investment in Microsoft has been dead money for quite a while now. The stock has traded in a pretty narrow range between $22 and $32 except in late 2007 and 2008 during the financial crisis when it spiked and then plunged. The stock does…

Commercial banks and savings institutions insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) reported aggregate net income of $34.7 billion in the fourth quarter of 2012, a $9.3 billion (36.9 percent) improvement from the $25.3…

France had pinned its hope that threat to EMU would be turned back before the wolf came it its door. The Italian political tensions come at the poor time for France. Its ability to absorb shocks is terribly constrained. Recall what has…

News links for 26 February 2013

The situation needless to say is very fluid and although the euro has stabilized, the threat to euro area stability is clearly evident in the debt markets where Italy's 10-year yields has soared 32 bp and the spread over Germany has widened…

Intense conflicts over water will probably not be confined to the developing world. So far, Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico, and Colorado have been able to make and keep agreements defining who gets how much of the Colorado River's…

News links for 25 February 2013

Sub-investment-grade loans continue to perform well, driven by demand for floating rate product. As an example, the chart below compares the performance of Invesco's "Senior Income" fund (VVR) - which mostly holds loans of…

According to Angela Merkel, speaking in the German city of Mainz in mid February, European countries struggling with the fallout of the euro-area debt crisis have much to learn from East Germany’s experience with economic overhaul…

For domestic investors, the safe haven asset class are government liabilities if the government has substantially all liabilities in the currency it creates. For foreign investors, like domestic investors, you want to protect against…