Credit Writedowns

The French housing market transaction volume declined by 25% last year, according to Century21. The fall in the French housing market is just beginning. And given the macro problems in France and the previous run up in house prices, the…

Let's talk about deficits for a second. The term deficit has some pretty serious negative connotations. So when we use that word, usually the implication is that the deficit is bad. Here's the thing though; as I have written here a number…

I have a ton of links here since I haven't been able to post since New Year's Eve. I hope to have a bit more link commentary coming forward in upcoming links posts. A few of the Spain links are older articles I thought relevant to today.  …

I got the following spam email yesterday. It was sent from an email address with the sender name BEN BERNANKE

The explosive market rally following the fiscal cliff agreement was based more on what didn't happen than what did. What didn't happen was the implementation of automatic tax increases and spending cuts that would have shaved about 5% off…

Spain had an estimated 350 billion euros of debt that it needed to roll over in the three years from 2011 according to analysts at Brockhouse Capital. Add in the likely need to fund regional government deficits and rollovers as well as the…

The Spanish bank run caused by redenomination risk is over. And Spanish bond yields are now back to around the 5% level today. Apparently, the ECB's monetisation scheme has worked - and without Spain's having entered a Troika program yet…

Last night I was on BBC World News and BBC Radio talking about the fiscal cliff. I stressed the fact that the deal being worked out in Washington will still see a hefty rise in taxes for the middle class via the payroll tax and for wealthy…

Here is the last links post for 2012. See you on the other side.

America’s Deceptive 2012 Fiscal Cliff | Michael Hudson "The reality is that when banks load the economy down with debt, this leaves less to spend on domestic goods and services while driving up housing prices (and hence the cost of living)…