debt

The U.S. Dollar has been holding up quite nicely during this credit crisis. In fact, it rallied significantly from deeply oversold levels against the Euro and British Pound (remember Dollar-Euro at 1.60 and Dollar-Pound at 2.10?). However,…

Stephen Roach must feel a certain sense of Schadenfreude because he has been warning since the end of the Technology Bubble that U.S. monetary policy was reckless and would end in a very bad way. The bubble reached heights few anticipated,…

America is the largest debtor nation in history. And given the economic weakness in the global economy right now, the debt load is likely to get worse. Recently, China surpassed Japan to become America's largest creditor.The Chinese, who…

I caught a post today on the Swiss Blog Zeitenwende about Glencore, the Swiss corporate giant, which should reinforce the fact that this credit crisis is far from over. As the original post was in German, I have translated it into English…

By now, you are familiar with the carry trade, where one borrows in one's own currency in order to invest in higher yielding foreign assets, often times with significant leverage. The Japanese were famous for making this trade in…

I ran across a very disturbing news item today that is getting a lot of press in Germany. Apparently, the leveraged finance community is getting routed at the German Automaker VW. The crux of the situation is that Porsche, which controls…

The recent movement in global markets has me scratching my head a bit. You have people dumping gold and the Swiss Franc in order to invest in the U.S. dollar and Treasury securities. Everyone says it is a flight to quality. I do not…

I have felt for sometime that dollar strength is a counter-trend that has a sell-by date written all over it. You see, the Federal Reserve is ballooning its balance sheet like nobody's business as it tries to be the global lender of last…

The United States had been living beyond its means for a very long time before the credit crisis finally hit. The truth of the matter is that U.S. monetary and fiscal policy rewarded risk-taking and leverage at the expense of prudence and…