bankruptcy

Lots of debate out there what took the market down today. We’re not certain you can tag the first 15 S&P points on a single factor — MF Global, euro, Italy, yen intervention and strong dollar, or simple profit taking — but willing to up…

Much of macroeconomic policymaking is trial and error. This column discusses calamitous error on the part of Iceland’s policymakers, in the hope that others can at least try something else.

Just a few moments ago I posted on the fact that the US is officially in bear market territory. On Twitter, I said that “in Fall 2008, 10-year yields went to extreme lows and then the liquidity train went into overdrive. Stocks rallied,…

Central Falls, Rhode Island faces a plight that should be studied for its application elsewhere. It is nearly out of money. This is common news today, whether in Greece or California. The various parties are assumed to possess a means to…

Sheila Bair is a regulator no more. She will be missed.

Most analysts agree that Greece is insolvent. This column argues that the issue is whether Greece’s troubles are contagious.

As James Galbraith has argued, the problem is said to be no more serious than some clogged plumbing. A bit of Drano in the form of government handouts and guarantees should be sufficient to get credit flowing again. Nonsense. Private debt…

This is my translation of an article from the German magazine Der Spiegel which says: "The debt crisis in Greece is getting worse. According to information available to SPIEGEL ONLINE, the country's government is considering leaving the…

The claims about “unsustainable deficits” gained new urgency this week as S&P warned that it was downgrading US federal government debt from stable to negative (see here for recent debate). This appeared to be a blatantly political…

Frederick J. Sheehan is the author of Panderer to Power: The Untold Story of How Alan Greenspan Enriched Wall Street and Left a Legacy of Recession  (McGraw-Hill, 2009) and "The Coming Collapse of the Municipal Bond…