credit

Earlier today, Japan's second largest consumer lender, Takefuji sought legal protection of bankruptcy. The source of its woes, and apparently others in that space, is that the borrowers were overcharged interest. Japan's regulator says that…

by Michael Pettis On Wednesday I will be putting up my piece on the politics of China’s adjustment process, but before doing that I wanted to mention a few recent particles worthy of comment.  First, Jamil Anderlinin has a long and…

by Annaly Capital Management Last Friday was a Z.1 Flow of Funds day, always a fun day. The 137 page report from the Federal Reserve features data for the second quarter of 2010. Total credit market debt outstanding grew slightly during…

As is often the case, the genesis of this post is a conversation initiated by Edward (Harrison) on the question of why we aren’t using monetary policy to stimulate aggregate demand. That question was posed here by Tyler Cowen at Marginal…

The Duke University/CFO Magazine Global Business Outlook Survey which concluded last week showed a high level of concern amongst top financial officers in major organizations worldwide. Of note are the CFOs ideas regarding employment and…

There were three pieces of data today that give the complete picture for the consumer economy right now. My read of the data says we are now in a holding pattern awaiting more concrete evidence that the technical recovery which began last…

by Comstock Partners For some time it has been our view that the recent recession, unlike all other post-war recessions, was caused by a credit crisis, and that it would therefore be followed by a series of weak recoveries and frequent…

By Annaly Capital Management Ireland’s rating downgrade by Standard & Poor's on August 24 and the related news of its struggling millstone, Anglo Irish Bank , bring our attention back to the ongoing challenges facing sovereign entities…

By Win Thin, Senior Currency Strategist, BBH In light of recent attention on Eastern Europe, here are some thoughts on Romania. The government has been unable to sell local debt at its self-imposed cap of 7% because investors have been…

By Win Thin, Senior Currency Strategist, BBH Harvard Professor (and former IMF official) Kenneth Rogoff expects some Eastern European countries to face sovereign crises over next 2-3 years.  In a weekend interview, Rogoff predicted…