Credit Writedowns

There's a lot of angst surrounding Apple's earnings announcement because of the stock's sell-off. While I have turned bearish on Apple, I still believe the numbers for the quarter will be good. The question for me is guidance.

I want to briefly reiterate the theme of an October post on Britain's role in Europe because of a speech the Prime Minister David Cameron made earlier today. Cameron, in a major speech in London, promised that if his party wins the next…

News links for 22 January 2013

This is an update to today's weekly on Ireland and Portugal. Olli Rehn, the European Economics Commissioner has just confirmed my months' long forecast on how the Irish and Portuguese bailouts would proceed: with an OMT-style exit…

I never subscribed to the idea that Greece was going to be expelled from the euro zone in 2012. However, my view on Greece is more pessimistic than most. Most policy makers in Europe would have you believe the euro crisis is over. Here's…

Raghuram Rajan has an interesting post now up on Project Syndicate. The overall tone of it has an Austrian feel as it stresses the failure of stimulus to allow developed economies to attain higher GDP growth a full five years after a…

Last October, I highlighted the issue of bailout extensions to Ireland and Portugal and so I want to re-visit this theme now that Portugal and Ireland are in the news looking to change the terms of their existing bailouts.

Although the House GOP leadership has been divided on how to deal with the upcoming fiscal contests, they have apparently decided to raise the debt ceiling and focus on the sequester as I have predicted.

While Germany's numbers for Q4 2012 were poor, showing a contraction of 0.5%, I noted in my last post on Germany that this does not mean recession. The contraction was due to export and capital investment figures, which look to rebound in…