Credit Writedowns

The stereotype of lazy southern Europe and the hard working North is just not reflected in the data. We came across this BLS data set over the weekend which was very enlightening and, in part, smashes this widely held generalization.

Rumors of an impending bank failure in Latvia over the weekend led to a run on bank machines. In many places it was impossible to get money.

Here’s a couple ugly charts we’re monitoring: China’s Shanghai Composite stock index and Commodity Research Bureau Index (CRB). Do you think there’s causality here? Remember the “China is buying/hoarding every commodity” story?

There were only two questions that mattered, going into the EU summit. Would leaders come up with any actions to help end the immediate crisis? Falling short of this, would any of their actions allow the European Central Bank to step up its…

Volatility tends to drop when market risk is building up and leverage is rising, luring investors into complacency. Indeed, the lower volatility justifies investors taking on more leverage; if volatility has dropped by a third, why not take…

Here are two interesting charts courtesy of the Macro Business Superblog. In outlining how the latest European crisis response policy fails to deal with the underlying issues in Euroland, Macro Business also illuminated the individual debt…

Below is the press release issued by ratings agency Moody's in response to the most recent initiative in Europe to solve the sovereign debt crisis.

The British decision to veto the proposed new EU treaty is not surprisingly provoking an avalanche of commentary this weekend. Among journalists, at least, there seems to be a consensus that David Cameron committed some kind of major…

Three events took place last week that will shape the general investment climate in the weeks and months ahead.

The US dollar is firm against all the major and emerging market currencies. Equity markets are lower, giving back all of Friday's gains and more. The euro has dropped 1% and the next level of support is seen near $1.3200.