derivatives

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,…

If you are wondering why the U.S. housing market is a mess, watch this video about a $103,000 mortgage that was used to finance a shack --literally, a shack. Of course, the mortgage was packaged with a bunch of others into a mortgage…

Recently, an enormous 33% premium has developed for Brent. To me, this gap is utterly inexplicable except by technical factors. Translation: some players have a huge long position of WTI and they are getting squeezed.

It wasn't until I read about a massive writedown by a German bank associated with the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers that I started to connect the dots. But, there is a hidden flaw in our accounting system which accounts for some of the…

You have probably never heard of Glencore. Well you have heard of its founder Marc Rich, the man infamously pardoned by President Clinton before he left office. And I suspect that you will soon hear a lot more about the company as well.…

Yves Smith has a good post over at Naked Capitalism that brings attention to the fact that banks are hiding potential losses in Level Three assets. Ultimately, these losses are going to have to be recorded and that means more credit…

On the financial scene, I see the biggest news as being the fact that the yield on 3-month treasuries have now gone negative. This is an absolute first. This means the U.S. government is being paid by investors to borrow. Given the fact…

The financial services sector has been the hardest hit sector in the credit crisis so far. Banks with large exposures to mortgage-backed securities like Citigroup, UBS and Merrill Lynch have suffered the most. This is largely because the…

Today's round-up is going to principally be about the three CCC's of Countries, Citigroup and Corporates.  But I also have some tidbits on other topics as well.  So let's jump right in. Yesterday sucked. Markets fell everywhere from…

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…