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Iceland: a cautionary tale for small nations
Jon Danielsson has a very thorough piece up on the VoxEU site which details the catastrophic collapse of Iceland and its banking system. This is a cautionary tale on two fronts.
First, Iceland was a small country with a very large…
Law firm confirms the disaster at Lehman
Many will suffer at the hands of Lehman Brothers. That is the verdict by white-shoe law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz - a firm I had the pleasure of working with during my previous life in finance. They are very good.…
The recession has been confirmed – semi-officially
Robert Hall, the head of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), which is the official arbiter of recession in the United States, has said the evidence is now "conclusive" that the U.S. is in recession. For me, that's pretty much…
Automakers likely to be bailed out
The stars are aligned for the big three automakers because everyone is coming out in their favor. First, we heard that they were meeting with congressional leaders on Capitol Hill. Then, we heard that Rahm Emanuel, a house democrat and…
Buffett is buying utilities, should you?
Last week, I posted an article on why the recent rally did not look anything like a bull market titled "An amazing market rally. What's next?"o, it seems like I was bullish for all of two weeks. Yet, the truth is I was never bullish on the…
Financial sector losses near $1 trillion
The financial sector bailout continues on track. Meanwhile, financial services sector losses have hit $919 billion. This summer, I had been of the view that we would see $1.5 trillion in losses before this was over. However, this is…
The emerging markets crisis
Last night an article by Niels Jensen of Absolute Return Partners caught my eye. In it, he made a very strong case for worrying about European bank exposure to emerging markets and its potential for creating systemic risk. I would like to…
Bailout Nation
The United States Government's bailout of the financial sector is approaching breathtaking proportions. There are so many pronouncements and announcements of this monetary stimulus and that loan of this preferred equity stake and that…
News round-up: 10 Nov 2008
This past weekend I went away to the beach where I watched no television, listened to no radio and read no newspapers. It was good to get away from the constant drip-drip of bad economic news that has overcome the global economy.Now, I am…
Doubling down at AIG
The U.S. government is throwing money at the financial sector like nobody's business. The latest salvo in this ridiculous affair comes in the form of more money for AIG. Rather than prattle on about how shambolic the U.S. bailout has…