small business

My contention has been that global growth is accelerating. Backing that up, yesterday I looked at four economies where growth has been good. Only in Sweden were we seeing renewed weakness. Today, I want to look at four economies where…

ECB President Draghi suggested last week that the central bank was taking a fresh look at the deposit rate. There does not appear to be any economist that thinks it is a good idea. The reasons vary, but the two main reasons are that it…

This is a second daily commentary today to give some weight to what's happening in the US after a slew of European-themed posts. I have three or four topics to cover here and I want to begin with the US economy including some thoughts on…

A reader of our blog here at Credit Writedowns recently wrote to me, detailing why Italians voted as they did in the recent general election. Her view speaks more to a rejection of corporatism and corruption than austerity.

We continue to be amazed at the eagerness of the market to rally in the face of negative fundamental data. The U.S. stock market rallied today on the news that the European Central Bank is getting together with other Central Banks (Bank of…

I have been arguing for a while that as long as the Chinese government retains its capacity to raise debt we are not going to see a sharp slowdown in economic growth – at least until 2013. Any indication that the economy is slowing too…

The mitigating factors are the recent manufacturing data and the pickup in small business credit. I especially like to see small business with access to and take up of credit because that could mean renewed hiring. The jobless claims…

Michael Pettis writes that in the current environment is that small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are hurting, and last week’s minimum reserve hike – which came out the same day as the CPI number – will undoubtedly make things worse since…

According to Louis Hernandez, U.S. government policy is geared toward the too big to fail banks and this undermines community banks and Credit Unions which serve small and medium sized businesses. His contention is that there is a vast…

Jamie Dimon's 17-minute interview by Maria Bartiromo below was done earlier in the week before JPMorgan Chase released their numbers. The numbers were good, showing quarterly profits of $4.8 billion or $1.12 a share. Dimon expects to resume…