Credit Writedowns

The Absolute Return Letter, October 2009 A Country for Old Men and a Bit of Samba The Man Card “Excuse me Sir, can I see your Man Card?” The stone-faced look of the security guard at Dallas Fort Worth Airport gave nothing away and,…

La producción industrial cae un 13.1% y encadena 16 meses de descensos Spain's industrial production is still cliff diving. How are their banks able to withstand this catastrophe? FT.com - HSBC chief fears a second downturn Consider…

The following is my translation of a much-discussed article that appeared in Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet at the weekend.  This information was being withheld from the public and leaked at an inopportune moment. Note that the…

You probably have heard about the Saturday Night Live skit poking fun at President Obama for allegedly not leaving a very robust list of accomplishments behind after 9 months in office.  So, without further ado, here it is. NPR says:…

Earlier today we learned that the Singapore PMI was much weaker than expected for September 2009, coming in at 50.6 versus 54.4 for August. While this demonstrates that the manufacturing sector there is still rising, it is doing so just…

In a 9-page Vanity Fair article “Wall Street’s Near-Death Experience,”giving us a sneak peek into the lives of bankers during the global meltdown last Autumn a hilarious quote of great significance was buried. At issue was the near-death…

Marshall Auerback sent me a link to a recent Simon Johnson missive about Goldman Sachs. I had already seen and liked this article, but his e-mail prompted me to write this post. My question is: Why is Goldman a bank holding company?…

Bronte Capital: Are the Spanish banks hiding their losses? Looking at the American data John is dubious about Spain like Edward Hugh. It seems a bit hard to believe we could have a depression-like environment in Spain without a serious…

I am going to double up on links today as I have a lot that I have found with more sill to come tomorrow morning. Enjoy this lot.   Is the Swiss Health Care System a Good Model for US? - Gary Becker The Swiss health care system…

Below is a wide-ranging interview with Marc Faber over four videos on CNBC TV18 in India explaining view on inflation, currencies, commodities, stocks and more. Asset-based economy. In general, he thinks we are in an inflationary…