Credit Writedowns

Unemployment claims rose to a monster reading of 542,000 last week. This is easily the highest figure in this business cycle and represents the largest number in 16 years. As with last week, there was absolutely nothing to like about this…

A few weeks ago we attempted to switch the blog here over to WordPress from the Blogger platform. It didn't go so well. In the interim, some of the technical issues seem to be sorted out. If you are reading this post, then we are all…

Yesterday morning, I heard Louise Yamada on Tom Keene's show on Bloomberg Radio giving her assessment that stocks may break below 2002 lows. I mentioned this in yesterday's news round-up. But, now I have the audio for you as well.…

America is the largest debtor nation in history. And given the economic weakness in the global economy right now, the debt load is likely to get worse. Recently, China surpassed Japan to become America's largest creditor.The Chinese, who…

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Yesterday's big news came at the hearings in Washington D.C. where U.S. Treasury Secretary Paulson did his best Donald Rumsfeld imitation, stonewalling Congress despite increasing anger at how the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) is…

Consumer prices came down more than expected with the CPI (Consumer Price Index) falling 1.0% month-to-month. This s a large decline, but is entirely related to fall in the price of oil. Underlying core CPI excluding food and energy, down…

The tag line from the Obama campaign was "Change We Can Believe In." However, an increasing number of people are becoming skeptical as to whether Obama will actually change anything. I, for one, have always felt his cautious approach meant…

I caught a post today on the Swiss Blog Zeitenwende about Glencore, the Swiss corporate giant, which should reinforce the fact that this credit crisis is far from over. As the original post was in German, I have translated it into English…

Why not? Everyone else is getting something. Aegon, a Dutch company, is trying the same maneuver that Genworth Financial and Hartford, two American companies, are trying -- it's buying a small depositary institution. This will give it…