bonds

Honestly, I expected today to be up. In fact, it was a good day for much of the day. Overnight, the Hang Seng and the Straits Times were up over 3% in Asia. The European markets lost only a few percent. None of this prepared us for the…

The yield on U.S. Treasury securities shot violently upward for the third day as the U.S. Government prepares to raise hundreds of billions of dollars in defense of its banking system. Up until a few days ago, treasury yields sank as…

Artificially low interest rates are what got us into this mess. Why should we think that they will help us get out? That's the question I ask myself and Marc Faber, otherwise known as Dr. Doom, answers that they won't.They certainly…

Here are five books you will NOT find me touting at the Credit Writedowns Amazon Store.Dow, 30,000 by 2008: Why It's Different This Time - Robert ZuccaroDow 36,000: The New Strategy for Profiting From the Coming Rise in the Stock Market -…

The markets are having a very bad day today. After we saw the Europeans were also vulnerable to this credit crisis, stock markets worldwide sold off, with many European markets seeing their largest drops since 1987. For Europe, today is…

On the heels of weekend trouble at European banks, markets in Asia and Europe are selling off this morning. At the weekend, we learned that Hypo Real Estate, a finance behemoth in Germany with $700 billion in assets was feared to collapse.…

It's not 777 points, but 485 points up will have to do for anyone who is not excited about a market crash. Financials were way up today despite the fact that Paulson's Economic Patriot Act was torpedoed by Congress. Let's savour the…

I just watched a great clip of an interview Jim Chanos, the famous head of hedge fund Kynikos Associates, did with the FT's Gillian Tett (Hat tip FT Alphaville). Chanos does a very good job of arguing hat short sellers are being unfairly…

The interesting thing about the Paulson proposal is that it gives the U.S. Treasury carte blanche to buy any of these toxic assets at any price it chooses. This is relevant because of mark to market rules in FAS 157. I have posted a few…

As Hank Paulson looks to push through his Economic Patriot Act, it bears remembering that just a few months ago he saw Covered Bonds as a potential solution to U.S. problems with declining home prices. They are not the solution. This…