Credit Writedowns

The BEA says: Real gross domestic product -- the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States -- increased at an annual rate of 5.7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009, (that is, from the…

The cartoon speaks for itself

This is a post which was originally published at A Fistful of Euros. Well there certainly is a lot happening out there at the moment. And Monday’s successful bond sale which left the Greek government triumphantly proclaiming they could…

Of all the coverage of last night’s State of the Union address, the video below stands out. Now, I’m sure Matthews will have a defence for this piece of analysis i.e. “he was so good that all the talk about Obama and race slipped my mind…

This is a great graphic showing the money and asset flows in the AIG bailout that makes it far easier to understand why people are calling the AIG bailout a backdoor bailout of AIG’s counterparties.  Take a look. Source CHART OF…

Last week, I wrote a post “Is the recession dating committee preparing for a double dip?” the gist of which was to question whether the NBER recession data committee thought a double dip was likely.  But an e-mail exchange I had this…

This is the second week running that we have seen higher jobless claims.  Two weeks ago the 4-week average seasonally adjusted number was 440,750. This was a number reflective of steadily declining claims in the period leading up to…

Banks Help Employees With Wall Street Pay – WSJ.com FT.com – An early warning system for asset bubbles FT.com – Portugal vows to cut deficit by two thirds Howard Zinn, Historian, Dies at 87 – Obituary (Obit) – NYTimes.com Credit…

I just received this document from an interested reader. It is a request by Congressman Darrell Issa for a subpoena to be issued in order to facilitate the investigation surrounding the AIG cover-up. Apparently, evidence has now surfaced…

In November 2008, the SEC approved a request by American International Group (AIG) to keep secret until November 2018 documents which reveal securities behind the brewing scandal over its bailout by the Federal Reserve. A copy of the…