Credit Writedowns

Last year, the British economy was one of the hardest hit by the now evident commercial property (CRE) implosion. Prices fell 27.1% in 2008, including a record 5.8% in December alone, suggesting the trend is accelerating. I mentioned in my…

This will be a bit longer of a preamble. Despite my bearish calls, I am feeling a bit tense about all of this market turmoil. Almost all of my calls are going the right way: oil, bank stocks, the general market, gold, Treasuries. Currencies…

Economics and finance are slowly coming to grips with the fact that human beings are simply not rational. The boom-bust cycle that we are now living gives us a front row seat to that irrationality. Below is a video by Dan Ariely that is…

This past week, jobless claims in the U.S. soared as they always do after the holiday season. For the week ending Jan. 10th, initial jobless claims were 524,000, up 54,000 from the prior week. However, this figure is completely distorted…

In my book, losing a gargantuan $125 billion qualifies you as the dumb money. This appears to be what has happened at Abu Dhabi's leading Sovereign Wealth Fund. I had been warning all throughout 2008 that the Sovereign Wealth Funds were…

The European Central Bank cut its benchmark rate 50 basis points (0.50%) to 2% because of weakness in the Eurozone. While a cut was widely anticipated, it was not known whether the ECB would cut 25 or 50 basis points. However, the cut of…

JPMorgan Chase moved up its earnings announcement to today in order to surprise the market with better than expected earnings. The company reported full-year income of $5.6 billion and 4th-quarter income of $702 million or $0.07 a share,…

The statements coming from Meredith Whitney in this video interview with CNBC's Maria Bartiromo could not be more blunt: the financial serves sector is weak, needs bailout money and investors will be diluted. As a result, she expects…

Earnings season is upon us and I think it bears remembering that earnings season for banks has generally been associated with very bad news for banks over the past two years. Every earnings season is filled with surprise writedown…

As you know from reading my blog, I am expecting a lot of writedowns from regional banks as real estate loans sour. In fact, I expect a number of bankruptcies because of defaults in commercial real estate where much exposure is hidden.…