Credit Writedowns

George Soros believes regulators “will always be wrong.” But, he does not feel that gives them an excuse to fall asleep at the wheel. In this video conversation with the Wall Street Journal’s Alan Murray, Soros makes the case for regulatory…

PIMCO, the world’s largest bond fund, has a new investment outlook by Founder Bill Gross. In it he says that we are in a long-term lower growth pattern as the asset-based economy of yore has melted away.  He warns that this means risky…

Of late, there have been a lot of worries about he potential for inflation in the U.S.  Marc Faber is the most noted pundit in this regard. Over-the-top comments he made back in May about hyperinflation in the U.S. may have been a catalyst…

Update 19 Jan 2010: In light of Euro weakness and the fissures in the Eurozone economy, one should how the dollar is going to fall precipitously as many have been arguing for months. The Chinese have pegged their currency, the Eurozone has…

Financial sector pro-cyclicality: Lessons from the crisis, Part II - vox On the back of the last article, here are some proposals on how to mitigate the pro-cyclical effects of compensation and leverage Financial sector…

This is effectively bankruptcy. Bloomberg reports. California is poised to begin its new fiscal year tomorrow without a plan in place to close a $24 billion deficit as the state prepares to conserve cash by issuing IOUs to vendors who are…

This past weekend I saw the film Food Inc, which I recommend highly to anyone looking to see how deregulation has affected industries other than finance.  While the subject of Food Inc was how the industrialization of food policy in…

Apparently, the U.S. auto industry is working off a significant backlog of inventory because I have been hearing that pretty much everyone in North America is planning to ramp up production for the third quarter.  This is prima facie…

As If you didn’t know this already, the wall of money being funnelled through Chinese banks is creating a massive speculative bubble in shares.  The Telegraph reports: Under orders from the government, China's banks have flooded…

Moodys pone en perspectiva negativa cdulas hipotecarias de Bancaja y CAM - Finanzas Moodys is downgrading Spanish savings banks. There is still significant weakness in the financial sector in Spain. The Spanish desperately want a…