Credit Writedowns

I have not posted all day because I have been spending most of the day doing site maintenance -- importing the data from the credit crisis timeline into a database, which will make it a lot easier to update, backfill and make changes to the…

  PJB: Obama's First 100 Days - Patrick BuchananUndeniably, a powerful tide is running for the Democratic Party, with one week left to Election Day. Bush’s approval rating is 27 percent, just above Richard Nixon’s Watergate nadir and…

Patrick Buchanan has given up on any chances of McCain winning this election judging by his last blog post. The title alone says it all. In a missive titled "Obama’s First 100 Days" Buchanan asks what an Obama Administration will look like.…

This week, I can practically repeat what I said last week verbatim - so, I will.Writedowns continued unabated despite the easing global credit markets. While we should see a bear market rally due to this easing, the ill effects of a global…

This is a quote from the populist American politician William Jennings Bryan, a Democrat famous at the beginning of the last century."There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that if you just legislate to make the…

The S&P/Case-Shiller® Home Price Indices were released today. They showed a further decline in home prices in the United States through August 2008 (the data most recently available). In the year to August, prices dropped 17.7% for the…

A while back, as I scanned the wreckage of the market meltdown, the energy sector caught my attention. In particular, I noticed the refining and oil services sectors because they are not as beholden to falling prices as the Exploration and…

I ran across a very disturbing news item today that is getting a lot of press in Germany. Apparently, the leveraged finance community is getting routed at the German Automaker VW. The crux of the situation is that Porsche, which controls…

GOP 'mavericks' concerned with McCain - Politico In the past week alone, a handful of liberal, moderate and independent-leaning Republican officials have publicly announced they are supporting Barack Obama.Messy trial ends with a decisive…

As with everything else, the bailout of the U.S. banking system is going to have unintended consequences. One of them seems to be giving exactly those firms that wasted billions of shareholder money a chance to double down. Flush with…