crisis

Simon Johnson, a former IMF Chief Economist, who blogs over at the Baseline Scenario, is testifying before Congress today about 'Too big to fail' financial institutions.  Below is a video in which he tells Bloomberg his thoughts on the…

The Bloomberg video below makes it seem that Whitney believes the stress tests are a sham. She says the tests are a theoretical exercise whereby banks ask: "what will our earnings power be in two years after we sell off these 'toxic'…

I am sure you have seen the catastrophic financial results of Swiss bank UBS released this week. I have been saying for quite some time that UBS is too big to fail, but also too big to bail for tiny Switzerland. In my view, the recent…

John Hussman has a nice piece out named "Green Shoots over Thin Ice. (hat tip Scott)" Below is the core of his argument regarding the recent rally in stocks and the free gift to bondholders. I have bolded parts of the original to add…

This April 2009 post is holding up well and still describes my view on the economic situation in the United States. I am much more confident that the cyclical forces I described here are leading to a recovery. The question now has to do…

This is a re-post that I hope serves as a reminder that although we are NOT talking about a liquidity crisis in the financial sector, but rather a solvency crisis, liquidity remains very much a concern. This post, despite being 6 months…

This comes via Marc Chandler of Brown Brothers Harriman and is an even-handed review of what just happened: As widely expected FASB modified fair value accounting rules. The key seems to be for assets for which there is not a market. The…

This post was an April Fool's joke. We all know this is not going to happen anytime soon.

This video from yesterday's Council on Foreign Relations symposium gives Treasury Seretary Tim Geithner a chance to explain why he has constructed his bailout plan in the way he has. Rather than editorialize the video, I will provide it…

The political realities of solving a financial crisis have often meant circumventing legislative approval to meet the exigencies of a particular situation.  This was certainly the case in 1995 during the so-called Tequila Crisis in Mexico.…