Credit Writedowns

For me, the most important events of late have been the European banking sector meltdown. Just last week, German officials were lecturing the UK and the U.S. about their banking systems and now we see a number of European institutions…

Update: While the Irish were following the Swedish script, it became clear to me shortly after I wrote this that the bank debt guarantees were not a good idea. This post from Willem Buiter explains it best.  Along with American and…

Despite the fall in markets, Congress's not having passed the Economic Patriot Act may be a blessing in disguise. The FTSE is trading up. Dow futures show a rise of 170 points. So, maybe the sell-off was a one-day event. In any event, it…

UPDATE 6:15 PM ET: The Dow ended down 777 points for it's largest one day loss ever. The S&P and Nasdaq were both off 9%. The futures market show even greater losses are expected tomorrow.A brutal day in the markets was made that much…

The price tag was less than one would have liked, but these are desperate times for sellers of financial assets. Lehman Brothers secured a sale of its crown jewel investment management division for $2.15 billion in a sale to private equity…

The Financial Times caught up with two great economic pundits in Jim Grant and Stephen Roach. Below are links to six video interviews by the FT with these two gentlemen (three each). They should be enlightening regarding the global credit…

The House of Representatives in the United States has defeated the proposal originally crafted by U.S. Treasury Secretary to help bail the U.S. out of financial difficulties. My hope is that Congress can get to business and craft a…

I have said before that a systemic response is necessary to deal with the present banking crisis in the United States. This crisis has nothing to do with subprime assets and little to do with things like predatory lending. Those are issues…

I am listening to C-Span where the House of Representatives is debating whether to pass the deeply flawed bailout bill that has been crafted on the heels of major disturbances in financial services. Unfortunately, this bill is not going to…

Connecticut-based Clayton Homes, now owned by Berkshire Hathaway and called Clayton Holdings, (not to be confused with Clayton Homes, a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway)*, has warned that Subprime and Alt-A delinquencies in the U.S. are…