Credit Writedowns

By Marc Chandler of Brown Brothers Harriman Highlights The US dollar is extending last week’s pullback in what appears to be largely position adjustments, partly as a function of a better news stream and a healthier appetite for…

Muni investors are acting as if there is no default risk in the municipal bond market based on yields.  It's a bit like the conditions in the eurozone before the sovereign debt crisis. The Wall Street Journal reports: Investors are…

This week's review post is a bit late since I have been spending all my time watching the World Cup. Like last week, I will put the review in narrative form with links to last week's posts embedded. The numbers were OK but... I think the…

Topic of the Day - Germany: austerity, social unrest, protectionism and gold bunkers Schwere Krawalle in Berlin: Zehntausende protestieren gegen Sparpaket | FTD.de Krisenanlage: Banken bauen Goldbunker | FTD.de FT Alphaville -…

This is a guest post by Karl Deeter of the Irish Mortgage Brokers Blog. We are reminded by Shane Ross' article in the Sunday Irish Independent "Cowen spins for his political life" that these banking issues are political for…

Here’s the third in the series of paper abstracts submitted to the Bologna conference in 2007 and which weren’t considered sufficiently interesting to be selected for presentation. This time the topic is migration and the Baltics, and the…

That was the week that was, it’s over, let it go……. Well I don’t suppose it’s that often that people get the opportunity to enthuse about the International Monetary Fund. Normally you find people like Joseph Stiglitz, or Naomi Klein, who…

This is a post on demographics inspired by a conversation I had earlier today. Detroit was, in its heyday just after World War II, when the US auto industry was literally firing on all cylinders, the fourth largest in the U.S., Its…

Link of the Day Time to Slip into Something Less Comfortable? – BusinessWeek The Usual Fare England 1-1 USA | World Cup Group C match report | Football | guardian.co.uk FDIC: Press Releases - East West Bank, Pasadena,…

By Annaly Capital Management. We’ve made no secret of our love for the Federal Reserve’s Z.1 Flow of Funds report. The only thing more amazing than the impressive volume of data in the release is the lack of coverage it receives by the…