credit

I am on record for expecting a serious downturn after the Tech Bubble crashed in 2001. We muddled through for a few years, but ultimately most of the damage was done and gone by 2004. The Tech Bubble was a bubble of asset prices that had…

Since the beginning of the bull market in 1982, the U.S. has become a society hooked on debt. Total debt (including financial services companies) has nearly doubled as a percentage of GDP in those 25-odd years (from 133% of GDP at $4…

First the banks won't refinance, then they won't restructure mortgages, now they're pulling out all stops in this mortgage mess. They are pulling existing home equity lines of credit. That's right, in a feeble attempt to save their sorry…

The Lex column in Yesterday's FT highlights what many market players are thinking about the company's £4 billion ($8 billion) rights issue: the economic outlook in the UK is worse than feared."The main potential explanation for the apparent…

If you are looking for companies that have yet to write down massive amounts of losses in this global credit meltdown, look no further than Banco Santander. The Spanish Bank holds a major position in the Spanish mortgage and construction…

RBS, the second largest British bank behind HSBC, has finally come clean on the credit crisis. The price? An enormous $24 billion in new capital needed. This is a huge story because this does not even begin to discount the credit problems…

Since the housing bubble created a global credit crunch in June 2007 after Bear Stearns announced the collapse of two funds it ran (its High-Grade Structured Credit Fund and its High Grade Structured Credit Enhanced Leveraged Fund), there…

A few days ago Comstock Partners released a Special Report outlining how we got into the economic malaise that is hitting us right now. Their report is spot on in terms of the genesis of our problems being easy money. They also accurately…

This is a story of unequal re-distribution of wealth from the less fortunate to the more fortunate. This is a story of the United States in which the rich get richer at the expense of everybody else. At the conclusion, ask yourself: is this…

Note from June 2010: You'll forgive me if I have conflated private and public sector debt below as if they are the same. They are not. When I speak of deficit spending in the same voice as private sector debts, I really point to deficits to…