debt

Most of us have about 20 years to secure our retirement - from our mid 40s to our mid 60s. That has been an absolute disaster for my generation, with inflation-adjusted returns on a global equity portfolio being down about 23% over the past…

That’s the question on everyone’s mind and the one Bill Gross of Pimco attempts to answer in this month’s Investment Outlook. He starts out defining the problem as a lack of aggregate demand – the Keynesian understanding of depression.…

The last feature on the list of links below is on CRE in Washington D.C. where the economy is fairly robust. If you know anything about these properties, you would agree these are not poor properties at all. The problem with them is not…

By now, you know about the much-discussed swaps that Greece used to conceal it’s debt load.  While the amount of debt concealed is low relative to the total, the mere fact that Greece attempted to conceal its true fiscal position is…

Bloomberg reports: The Japanese government’s net assets in 2009 may have fallen below zero for the first time, the Nikkei newspaper reported, citing an unidentified government official. The result, which includes the central and…

This is a post by Edward Hugh, who also blogs at Global Economy Matters. “If you don’t fully understand an instrument, don’t buy it.” To the above advice from Emilio Botín, Executive Chairman of Spain’s Grupo Santander, I would simply…

Edward Hugh here. Well, I may say there were no surprises, but in fact the Greek economy contracted more than many observers expected in the fourth quarter, while downward revisions to the rest of 2009 converted the present recession into…

There are a lot of interlocking threads in the Greek saga. One consistent theme that ties all of the different threads together is the fragility of complex systems. In our globalized and complex world of finance and banking, every major…

One of the larger problems in the unfolding meltdown in Greece is the fraud apparently perpetrated by past Greek governments to conceal their true levels of debt. This is having a very adverse effect on Greek credit spreads to (German)…

Commenting about the recent Wall Street Journal article “Housing rebound in Canada spurs talk of new bubble,” Rolfe Winkler of Reuters says Last week Paul Krugman toasted the sobriety of Canadian banks. Among other things, he said that…