Credit Writedowns

A common denominator runs throughout recorded history: a rising proportion of debts cannot be paid. Adam Smith remarked that no government ever had repaid its debt, and today the same can be said of the overall volume of private-sector…

As full liquidity returns to the markets for the first time in nearly a week, the US dollar and Japanese yen have rallied. First though weak short euros and long yen cross positions were squeezed in early Asia, but by the time Europe…

April 9, 2012 is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the most infamous savings and loan fraud, Charles Keating’s, successful use of five U.S. Senators to escape sanction for a massive violation of the law. The Senators were Alan Cranston (D.…

This chart from the Wall Street Journal explains visually what worries me about the supercharged run up in the S&P500. While the index is increasing, earnings growth is not.

To try to work out what China's future economic options might be I will begin with two key assumptions. The first is that the fundamental imbalance in China is the very low GDP share of consumption. This low GDP share of consumption, I have…

Given a clearly overbought market, the re-emergence of Europe's sovereign debt problem and the Fed reducing the imminence of QE3, even the bulls concede that a correction is likely. Overall, however, investors remain optimistic, and are…

One word can summarize today's report: disappointing. The 120k rise in the headline figure was roughly half of the whisper figure. The unemployment rate ticked down to 8.2%, but the details are disappointing.

I continue to believe that US share prices are based on a benign if not an optimistic view of the macro environment. If we see anything less, I believe US shares will be the ones to pull back most as opposed to European ones.

"The anger that prompted Christoulas to take his own life in Syntagma Square in view of the Greek parliament is shared by much of the middle-class and low-income Greeks who have carried a disproportionate burden of the stringent tax…

Take a look at the long-term charts of crude oil and natural gas. The historical oil-to-gas price ratio had ranged from 6:1 to 10:1 before the economic crisis. Since one barrel of oil contains the energy equivalent of the 5.825 million…