Credit Writedowns

Pretty hard to argue now the Spanish bank borrowing from the ECB is simply in line with the country’s share of total GDP I would have thought. Also, after having trended upwards ever so slightly for a couple of months, Spain’s industrial…

The minutes from the recent FOMC meeting were not as dovish as some had expected and this seems to have encouraged some profit-taking on short dollar positions. As widely expected the Fed to cut inflation and growth forecasts, but the…

There is a good deal of speculation in the press at the moment over the tricky issue of whether or not Poland will be able to comply with its agreed deficit-reduction deadline on the basis of the latest budget proposals announced by the…

Must-reads Why the Doomsayers Are Wrong - WSJ.com The New Doom: A Second Wave of Economic Pessimism Spreading Outside Wonkdom | The New York Observer The Usual Fare Hitzewelle: Bauernpräsident sieht höhere Lebensmittelpreise -…

Picking up where I left off in the last post regarding forward earnings, David Rosenberg has this to say: Intel enjoyed its best quarter ever at the peak of the inventory cycle. Well done. What we are grappling with is this. If the…

I am on BNN in Canada today at 1215 ET to talk about matters financial. So as a lead-in to what I am going to say there, I wanted to write here about the retail sales numbers, earnings season and the economy. Retail sales were weak. The…

Highlights The US dollar is consolidating its recent losses in largely uneventful activity.  Sterling is the main exception to the generalization.  Boosted by the firmer than expected CPI report yesterday and today’s favorable…

From Annaly Capital Management There has been a lot of discussion recently about corporate cash levels, both in newspapers and blogs. Back in June, the Fed published the 1Q 2010 Flow of Funds report that shows corporations are sitting on…

A graph today from David Rosenberg, Chief Economist for Gluskin Sheff (Toronto), shows one of the severe headwinds the recovery is battling.  C&I (commercial and industrial) lending remains at historically depressed levels. …

Highlights US dollar was weaker vs. the majors, as the euro recovered to end the day higher after it fell to its lowest level vs. the dollar since July 6.  Moody’s downgraded Portugal to A1 from Aa2, but this was offset by strong…