TED Spread

This is an analysis of the remaining options in the euro zone post-Ireland bailout. This period in Europe reminds me very much of the period after the Indy Mac failure in the U.S. after which markets were in a permanent state of stress.…

The June Monthly Commentary By Annaly Capital Management. The Economy: The financial crisis is not over The Residential Mortgage Market: The tale of "fails" in the mortgage market The Commercial Mortgage Market:…

Increasingly policy makers and investors are thinking about the consequences of the European financial crisis. The following focuses on two such consequences that are unlikely to appear on other lists.

Just last week, we saw a parade of banks exiting the dreaded TARP program set up last year by the U.S. government and used to temporarily recapitalize the U.S. banking system.  The banks were able to do so in no small measure because…

Despite the gloom and doom that you might read right here, things are certainly much better in credit markets than at the height of the credit crisis. Of course we still have a long way to go, but this chart from Bloomberg of the TED…

Credit markets continue to return to less extreme levels. While we are nowhere near where we were before the onset of the Lehman-induced panic, we are well off the panic levels of the worst of the crisis.The Times of London is reporting…

Last week, I wrote a cheeky little post called "The Panic is over," in which I argued that the Panic phase of this crisis would ebb and the more chronic problems of excessive debt, leverage and recession would move center stage. Of course,…

So, I am back in the saddle after a great weekend in Palm Beach. And three days almost entirely away from Newspapers, Televisions, Telephones, and Computers is a very good thing to clear the head. (Although I did happen to catch Sarah…

The markets are having a very bad day today. After we saw the Europeans were also vulnerable to this credit crisis, stock markets worldwide sold off, with many European markets seeing their largest drops since 1987. For Europe, today is…

Further proof that the credit markets are on the brink of systemic collapse is the fact that the widely followed risk spread Libor-OIS is at a record high. In the year before August 2007 when the credit crisis began, this spread averaged 8…