Credit Writedowns

'False dawn' in UK housing market "It's tempting to call the turn in the mortgage market at this point, and there is certainly concrete evidence that lending for house purchase is increasing," said the CML's economist Paul…

Magna wants to cut 10,500 jobs: report I guarantee you the job cuts will be disproportionately outside Germany. Economic crisis not over yet: IMF chief But if you listened to Larry Summers you'd think we were out of the woods. It…

Three failed banks this weekend. The big one is Corus: assets of $7 billion. FDIC: Failed Bank Information - Bank Closing Information for Venture Bank, Lacey, WA "As of July 28, 2009, Venture Bank had total assets of $970 million…

Below is a little clip allegedly from the Chinese newspaper Southern Metropolis Daily of some precious little schoolchildren. In the clip, a number of them tell us what they want to be when they grow up (I think I wanted to be a baseball…

This September 2009 post still describes my general view on the U.S. economy. If I wrote it today, I would be more bearish medium-term because it is obvious that in 2010 fiscal and monetary policy will become less supportive of recovery.…

Follow the money - BBC News "Find out how the money was spent and what it means for the taxpayers who have funded it" To the victors, the spoils: a post-Lehman scorecard | Reuters A year after their high-speed takeovers,…

This comes from the blog News from 1930: An out-of-work broker asked a friend who owned a circus for work. His friend said the circus gorilla had recently died, and if the broker wanted to get into the gorilla's skin, swing around,…

Today at 8:46ET and 9:03ET, please honor those who lost their lives eight years ago with a moment of silence.

Via CNBC: Bernie Madoff, the man who orchestrated the biggest Ponzi scheme in history, is heard on tape in 2005 talking to executives at Fairfield Greenwich about how to get around the SEC. Ron Geffner, a former SEC enforcement…

Yesterday I mentioned the announcement by the FDIC to end its debt guarantee program and opined that this was the first sign of tightening/liquidity withdrawal by the U.S. government.  Today the evidence is mounting that this is indeed…