Forecasts

I am pretty well satisfied that the subprime mess has reached its pinnacle. While there may yet be many more defaults, much of the disaster in subprime is baked into the cake. It's time to move on. But, move on to what? Most analysts say…

I was reading Barron's 2008 Midyear 2008 Roundtable just yesterday when a comment by Marc Faber struck me. He said that Obama is "not going to be good for the market." He expects Barack Obama to win in November and for the investment…

Deutsche Bank has sold three New York skyscrapers back to the Macklowe group at a discount of 20-30% reports the Wall Street Journal. This could be a watershed moment in the U.S. commercial real estate (CRE)sector. CRE is a sector that is…

It has been my assertion for some time that writedowns and the attendant unraveling of the financial system is the most troubling problem during this credit crisis. This process is deflationary by its very nature because credit contracts.…

My blog title comes from the title of an article, "Bank failures to surge in coming years" by MarketWatch on 23 May 2008. I highly recommend reading the full article. It mentions that only 3 banks have actually failed so far in…

When was the last time you heard of a major U.S. home builder going bankrupt? It's been quite a while. Even though my focus right now is firmly fixed on financial institutions and mortgage lenders, I have a watchful eye on home builders.…

Housing wire has a very interesting piece out today, suggesting that the mortgage crisis in the U.S. has moved far beyond merely subprime and even Alt-A; Prime borrowers are now where the greatest increase in mortgage stress is being felt.…

The bloggers over at Calculated Risk have reported on a story making the rounds in the Internet. This story involves S&P's downgrade of Alt-A Residential Mortgage Backed Securities (RMBSs). The crux of the matter is that S&P…

This past week, I attended an Investment luncheon to hear Greg Valliere, the chief political strategist with the Stanford Washington Research Group. He had a number of important things to say regarding the economic implications of…

A Bloomberg article today highlight's the Commercial real estate sector (CRE) as the next leg down in the U.S. property bubble. The article states:With 312,000 private-sector jobs lost in the last four months, foreclosure rates more than…