Credit Writedowns

The Rise and Fall of Empires - Paul Kedrosky (cool visual) FT Alphaville - A Minskian roadmap to the next gold mania At Failed Banks, Post-Mortems Disclose Excessive, Yet Obvious, Risk - NYTimes.com Economic Perspectives from…

Initial jobless claims for the past week were 505,000, tied with last week for the lowest since January. This brings the 4-week average down to 514,000, the lowest since November of last year and the 11th consecutive week of declines. …

I want to take a break from banking and macro stuff and talk a little bit about technology. I wrote an article about Android a few weeks back. That was a more personal account on why I was switching from a Windows Mobile phone to Android,…

Hat tip Rolfe Winkler.

After a huge fall off in credit consistent with the fall in nominal GDP, we are seeing credit stabilise at a lower level. Debt to GDP ratios may not be lower, but as GDP is lower, so too is credit in the system.  Yet there is a large…

Barack Obama has now come clean about his thinking on why his administration has decided to focus first on reducing the deficit and next on jobs. He fears a double-dip recession will occur if foreigners lose confidence in the U.S. dollar,…

Josh Reviews Everything: And then he took his pants off. Again. frontline: a class divided: watch the program | PBS In Case Someone Says You Couldnt See This Coming - Yves Smith U.S. conservatives: Obama bowed too deeply to…

Credit Suisse has a note out urging caution on Citigroup shares due to regulatory hurdles.  Their logic bears noting as it can be useful for other U.S.-based banks. On Monday the CS analysts met with Citi management, who were somewhat…

This excerpt comes from the blog News from 1930 which gives us a day-to-day account of what was being reported in 1930 before the worst of the Great Depression hit. “The unemployment situation in New York is critical. Unless it is…

Is this propaganda? I just received this e-mail from the FDIC’s consumer news with the title above. Personally, I never doubted that unbrokered deposits under $250,000 are safe at U.S. depositary institutions. But, the natural sceptic in me…