Credit Writedowns

The U.S. Dollar is rising once again. As the realization kicks in that the U.S. will not be alone in its economic struggles, currency traders are making major bets that interest rates will fall outside of the U.S. across the board. The…

I need a chance to vent about one company that just released earnings: Yahoo! I worked at Yahoo! for a number of years in a former life. It is a great brand and was a great company. But, the place has clearly been run into the…

While I am markedly more upbeat of late about economic matters, I still harbor some deep concerns about the direction of both the global economy and resultant political stability. The Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum has summed…

Bloomberg's Lisa Kassenaar and Christine Harper have written a good, long article about Goldman Sachs, how it dealt with crisis, and what led the venerated firm to the brink of collapse despite being the best run firm on Wall Street.…

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 recession and new concerns in emerging markets and Asia will cause writedowns…

Credit markets continue to return to less extreme levels. While we are nowhere near where we were before the onset of the Lehman-induced panic, we are well off the panic levels of the worst of the crisis.The Times of London is reporting…

Yesterday, I made the case for us to be less concerned about the U.S. and even Western Europe, but to be very concerned about a slowdown in Asia. The reasons for this are simple: most analysts now understand the extent of problems in the…

Yesterday, I said I am selectively bullish on stocks and bonds. Prices have come down s far that a number of companies are trading under book value. This suggests that investors are so fearful that they are selling anything or that they…

The Federal Reserve and its fellow central banks are pulling out all the stops to make sure the panic phase of this crisis is well and truly over. These kinds of moves are already having results as Libor and Euribor (the rate at whch banks…

Race has a way of inserting itself into almost everything in America. I have always found this troubling. In this particular Presidential election, it should be the economy here, the economy there, the economy everywhere. Yet, we also…