credit cards

McClatchy has an article out today showing that the credit crunch is hitting all sorts of consumer credit now. The crisis that began as one 'contained' to subprime, now has branched out into auto loans, credit card debt, student loans,…

Michael Panzner has a good post on his site about regional banks being the next front in the Credit Crisis. He mentions home equity lines (HELOCs) as a crucial piece there, referring to an article in the Financial Times. His blog entry…

Citigroup, Merrill, UBS Face Further Writedowns, Whitney SaysBy Jeff KearnsJune 9 (Bloomberg) -- Citigroup Inc., Merrill Lynch & Co. and UBS AG may post further writedowns of $10 billion on their debt holdings after the two biggest bond…

The bad news in the financial sector keeps coming. Today, the news is about National City, a Cleveland-based regional bank in the US. The Wall Street Journal reports that the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has put Nat…

Yesterday, in a post entitled "De-leveraging," I argued that credit writedowns and the resulting deleveraging are highly deflationary. This is the core of the problem with the global financial system. I want to expand a bit on that…

The Times reports today that Bradford and Bingley was rescued from the verge of collapse by private equity investors. This follows their report at the weekend on the dismissal of the Chief Executive and the profit warning they have issued.…

The President of the Boston Fed, Eric Rosengren, has in effect said that small and regional banks are at risk in the next wave of writedowns for U.S. financial institutions. He sites construction loan exposure in particular as a place to…

Along with the residential housing bust in Ireland, a commercial real estate (CRE) bust is definitely on the table. According to the newspaper the Irish Independent up to 10 billion euros of writedowns are possible for the Irish property…

This in from the Times today: Bradford & Bingley is in big trouble. They are trying to do a rights issue and issue a profit warning at the same time. Can anyone tell me how one gets shareholders to pony up another 88p to buy a stock…

The bloggers over at Calculated Risk have reported on a story making the rounds in the Internet. This story involves S&P's downgrade of Alt-A Residential Mortgage Backed Securities (RMBSs). The crux of the matter is that S&P…