finance charts

Although off its highs for the day, the Japanese Yen is still looking very strong against every major currency. Earlier, it pushed as high as 92 yen to the dollar. Jim Rogers was on Bloomberg saying it was headed much higher.

Something dramatic is happening in the currency markets. I commented on this in my post "US Dollar rising dramatically." These currency moves are related to international dollar debt, the carry trade unwind and expected interest rate cuts…

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…

Yesterday, I said that investors would begin to focus on the real economy now that the financial crisis has eased somewhat due to massive government intervention. Today, retail sales figures for September 2008 were released by the United…

The last time faced a recession and a Bear Market of such viciousness was 35 years ago in the recession of 1973-1975. In the UK, it was truly horrific as inflation shot up to 25% and stocks dropped more than 90% in inflation-adjusted terms.…

If the huge sell-off on Wall Street, the gaping up of LIBOR, the halt of credit liquidity everywhere, the nationalisation of financial institutions and the enormous TED spread are not enough to convince you that we are headed for a…

The bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, with assets of over $600 billion is the largest in U.S. history. Wikipedia has catalogued the list of the largest U.S. bankruptcies of all time. (Hat tip: Börsennotizbuch) Drum roll, please. The current…

Is the U.S. in recession or not? Well, the U.S. printed a 3.3% number for growth in the second quarter according to the data released last week. Since then, I have been asking myself why we shouldn't believe the U.S. is in an expansion…

For every business cycle since 1929, when U.S. unemployment data was first calculated, when the unemployment rate has gone up more than 1% in one year's time, this has spelled recession. Moreover, the unemployment rate has never risen 1.0%…

The global economy is in the relatively unique but unenviable position of being bullied by both recession and inflation at the same time. This leaves central banks in a bit of bind. The Federal Reserve has thrown all caution to the wind…