crisis

For me, the most important events of late have been the European banking sector meltdown. Just last week, German officials were lecturing the UK and the U.S. about their banking systems and now we see a number of European institutions…

Update: While the Irish were following the Swedish script, it became clear to me shortly after I wrote this that the bank debt guarantees were not a good idea. This post from Willem Buiter explains it best.  Along with American and…

Despite the fall in markets, Congress's not having passed the Economic Patriot Act may be a blessing in disguise. The FTSE is trading up. Dow futures show a rise of 170 points. So, maybe the sell-off was a one-day event. In any event, it…

UPDATE 6:15 PM ET: The Dow ended down 777 points for it's largest one day loss ever. The S&P and Nasdaq were both off 9%. The futures market show even greater losses are expected tomorrow.A brutal day in the markets was made that much…

The Financial Times caught up with two great economic pundits in Jim Grant and Stephen Roach. Below are links to six video interviews by the FT with these two gentlemen (three each). They should be enlightening regarding the global credit…

The House of Representatives in the United States has defeated the proposal originally crafted by U.S. Treasury Secretary to help bail the U.S. out of financial difficulties. My hope is that Congress can get to business and craft a…

I have said before that a systemic response is necessary to deal with the present banking crisis in the United States. This crisis has nothing to do with subprime assets and little to do with things like predatory lending. Those are issues…

Wachovia Corporation has agreed to be bought out by Citigroup in a deal supported by the U.S. government. Exact terms of the deal are still forthcoming, but this could be seen as a best case scenario for a bank which was increasingly under…

Echoing my sentiments in the last post, "The U.S. banking crisis: where are we?," Stephen Roach, the head of Morgan Stanley Asia has made a blistering attack on the U.S. Congress. He has labeled Congress's response to crisis…

This morning Chris Whalen made some comments on CNBC that hit the nail on the head regarding the U.S. banking crisis: there is a huge wave of old-fashioned loan losses coming down the pike. The writedowns we have seen to date are largely…