crisis

This just in from the German daily Der Spiegel: German banks are still loaded with risky U.S. assets, only a fraction of which has been written down. If this report is true, it suggests that the entire German banking sector is extremely…

There is no way to look past the way that the U.S. TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) has been administered and not understand we are seeing crony capitalism at work. One only need look at the way the British are doing things to see a…

Today, the Seattle Federal Home Loan Bank (FHLB) has admitted that it is on the verge of collapse and may need to avail itself of conservatorship, much as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac did previously. One should see this announcement as a…

Raghuram Rajan is a bloody good economist, that's who he is. Rajan, who succeeded Kenneth Rogoff at the International Monetary Fund as Chief Economist, is also a prescient voice of reason on any number of different subjects. Recently,…

Despite the gloom and doom that you might read right here, things are certainly much better in credit markets than at the height of the credit crisis. Of course we still have a long way to go, but this chart from Bloomberg of the TED…

With the weekend and Holiday season upon us, I wanted to end the week with a distraction of the day video sent to my by my friend Judith. I think it's pretty uplifting. Maybe, I'm just getting sentimental in my old age.

Back in November, Bloomberg News was forced to sue the Federal Reserve to gain greater disclosure on how emergency loans were being made to financial institutions and on what collateral was being used. I have followed this story closely…

It's been a month since I updated my list of writedowns and other credit crisis-related news, so I am sure that this list is filled with holes and missing information. Here it goes nonetheless. Below are the writedowns from the previous…

The Economist does a very good post-mortem on Iceland and its spectacular collapse with a number of lessons for other countries, especially those with oversized financial sectors like Ireland, Switzerland and the U.K.  Below is a snippet…

Yesterday, I mentioned an article I caught in the German newspaper Die Welt which outlined the desire for VW and Daimler Benz to receive bailouts in response to the state aid being offered to American car makers. I warned that a competitve…