Credit Writedowns

A few comments today: I like Sheila Bair.  She acts like a regulator should. When she warns of government exposure in mortgages, you should read the subtext as "if we in government are going to be the entire mortgage market, we…

As you know, I have been back pedalling on my support for fiscal stimulus since late in 2009. I still think fiscal policy is effective – more so than monetary policy; quantitative easing is a bust because we are in a liquidity trap. But the…

Highlights The US dollar is mixed today as it consolidates against the euro and Swiss franc, remains heavy against the yen and is performing best against sterling, especially following the unexpected marked deterioration of the trade…

Electoral disaster has a way of focusing the mind. Perhaps this is the best way to explain President Obama’s latest initiatives: an investment in the nation’s roads, railways and runways that would cost at least $50 billion, along with a…

Kay-Yut Chen and Marina Krakovsky have earned their colours as behavioural economists at Hewlett Packard in the HP Labs and in in their new book Secrets of the Moneylab  they present the gist of their research over the past 20 years.…

Michael Burry, the former head of Scion Capital LLC, made a big name predicting the housing market’s decline by taking short positions against it as lionized in Michael Lewis’ book "The Big Short."

A great article in this past weekend's Washington Post highlighted many of the major issues affecting the US housing market and most of those issues point to lower house prices.  In particular, the self-reinforcing psychology of…

On the role of the state What is the role of the state? | Martin Wolf's Exchange | FT.com oftwominds: The Overlapping Crises of Neoliberal Global Capitalism Both Martin Wolf and Charles Hugh Smith have good essays on government.…

Highlights The US dollar is mostly lower today, with sterling leading the way. Corporate acquisitions, or talk of them at any rate, with the help of the second consecutive rise in the Halifax home price index, and as expected…

When people talk about the recent sovereign debt crisis they make a lot of sweeping statements about debt and currency which allow them to make false analogies. This does us all a disservice because it creates a false impression about the…