Credit Writedowns

Highlights The US dollar is firmer against most major currencies. The euro, together with the Swiss franc and Swedish krona are the worst performers.  The euro failed to make a clear break above $1.38 yesterday and news reports…

FT.com – Asia's inflation genie leaps out of the bottle House prices to fall further as loan arrears rise – Independent.ie TheMoneyIllusion » It’s China’s world, we just live in it (Krugman, round two) More Americans live with…

News reports are now surfacing that the Germans are open to IMF involvement in the Greece sovereign debt crisis.  This is a 180-degree turn for the German finance minister who has expressed vocal opposition to the IMF’s involvement in…

This is a post from John Lounsbury. Charles J. Antonucci Sr., the former president and chief executive of the Park Avenue Bank of New York, made a desperate move to try to save his bank with the infusion of TARP funds. TARP refers to the…

Mortgage fraud was rampant during the housing boom. Regulators were asleep at the wheel during all of this. But now we are getting some indictments as WFAA News 8 in Dallas reports (hat tip Housing Wire). This television station did the…

I am going to talk here a little bit about the looming trade war between China and the United States. But I am going to come at it from a side angle via some historical analogies. Common folklore in the United States says that the Soviet…

Highlights The US dollar is softer against most major currencies.  The still expansionary FOMC statement, the BoJ’s extension of Q/E overnight and the conclusion of the EU finance ministers’ meeting yesterday may have helped ease…

Lehman Brothers Lehman Hid Money With Help of Global Rules – DealBook Blog – NYTimes.com The Lehman Report: Is It Time for a Special Prosecutor?: Rational Irrationality : The New Yorker Lehman: Regulators Chose to Deny, Extend and…

Last week the federal Reserve released its quarterly flow of funds data. I have been unusually slow to parse the numbers. But I did do a very comprehensive sweep of the historical data in an October 2009 post called A brief look at the…

I see Diana Olick’s recent comments about government mortgage modification programs as proof that these props will not work. She says: Despite extraordinary loss mitigation efforts that have resulted in the execution of approximately…