Credit Writedowns

From the London School of Economics website: Below is an audio recording of approximately 78 minutes where Gillian Tett takes us inside the shadowy world of complex finance and derivatives and explains how the business of slicing and…

This is a pretty cool video from New Scientist.  This team of modelers has come up with a way to model human mobility using data from dollar bill tracking site Where’s George? The result is a model that tracks smaller human movements,…

Berkshire’s Munger Favors ‘100% Ban’ on Credit Swaps - Bloomberg.com Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Vice Chairman Charles Munger said he supports an outright ban of credit- default swaps to prevent speculators from profiting on the failure of…

A discussion about Chrysler's bankruptcy plan with author Paul Ingrassia, Micheline Maynard, Senior business correspondent for the "New York Times" and John Stoll of "The Wall Street Journal"

This is FDIC seizure number 32 (more details here): Cache Valley Bank, Logan, Utah, Assumes All of the Deposits of America West Bank, Layton, Utah America West Bank, Layton, Utah, was closed today by the Utah Department of Financial…

This is number 31 by the FDIC this year. "The FDIC estimates that the cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund will be $18.1 million." (See link for further details): North Jersey Community Bank, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, Assumes All of the…

Here is the press release from the FDIC for failure number 30 I believe (so many I lose count). Notice the eye-popping losses of $1.3 billion (link here): FDIC Creates Bridge Bank to Take Over Operations of Silverton Bank, National…

Last month I noted that the ISM Manufacturing index indicated that the manufacturing sector was still contracting, albeit at a slower pace.  The latest data from the month of April show the same phenomenon.  likely, the index has already…

I wrote a note regarding the Q1 2009 GDP report which mentioned that the price deflator showed a large pick up in actual inflation. While I don't think we are off to the races immediately, I do see inflation as a medium-term threat and this…

With the stress test results coming out, it is a wonderful thing for Citigroup that it has been able to sell its Japanese brokerage unit to Sumitomo Mitsui, and at a good price of $7.8 billion. Here's an excerpt of the FT story:…