Credit Writedowns

The news on markets around the world is particularly dire this morning. Despite a late day rally in the U.S., markets in Asia and Europe are down as much as 9 and 10% and S&P Futures are 60 limit down. This is going to be a very ugly…

In a recent post I said that I was selectively scanning for value plays at this level. A reader asked me the legitimate question: "Why would anybody buy anything in this market?" Basically, he was questioning my sanity.I am entirely sane…

I am hearing of heavy early voting in the U.S. presidential election. In particular, I have heard stories of heavy voting in Georgia, Colorado, Florida and North Carolina. Apparently, Colorado's exit polls show an enormous 20%+ advantage…

This morning in an e-mail exchange with Marshall Auerback, I questioned why the U.S. Dollar was rising so precipitously. I do understand much of this has to do with a need to refinance dollar-denominated borrowing by international…

Jobless claims came in at 478,000 for the previous week, up from 463,000 the week before. But continuing claims were down 6,000 on the week to 3.720 million from 3.726 million.While the one-week continuing claims number is fine, all…

For those of you who have been following things, you know we have had three panics since the credit crisis began. The first was in August 2007. The 2nd after Bear Stearns collapsed and the third was creeping up after IndyMac and the GSE…

Asian Market Losses Deepen - NYTimes.comAsian stock markets headed into another day of steep falls on Thursday, led by the Nikkei 225 index, which plunged more than 7 percent in morning trading.African free trade zone is agreedThe leaders…

I don't think that the market as a whole is going to go up rapidly or that another bull market will soon be underway (In fact, I think we are in a secular bear market and the inflation-adjusted lows are even further down). However, I do…

Today I added My News Feed to the blog's sidebar, so that anyone visiting the site can also see the news items that we post once daily as a part of my RSS Feed and Newsletter.The benefit of the feed and newsletter version is that all the…

Something dramatic is happening in the currency markets. I commented on this in my post "US Dollar rising dramatically." These currency moves are related to international dollar debt, the carry trade unwind and expected interest rate cuts…