writedowns

All eyes today are on the Federal Reserve because the Federal Open Market Committee is due to release its policy statement. There is an unusual amount of interest in what Fed Chairman Jay Powell says at the subsequent press conference…

We are now getting the first data points which will inform the increasing disconnect between a rebound in shares and the freefall in the real economy. And, after yesterday's rally in share prices, we are seeing a risk-off tone to the market…

I participate in a weekday markets briefing at Real Vision these days. I love these. They're timely, spontaneous and fun. It's something we started there because markets have been so volatile and fast-moving in the wake of the coronavirus…

Earlier today, I was listening to an interview with IMF head Christine Lagarde dance around the issue of the unsustainability of Greece’s debt load. And she said something very telling. She said that debt haircuts were not on the table but…

About a month ago, I wrote a post on how market contagion would happen due to deteriorating credit conditions in energy high yield. And while this doesn’t necessarily lead to recession or financial crisis, it has already meant a real…

Owning shares in a bank is the functional equivalent of owning a call option on the bank’s future operational earnings, and if the share price contains little intrinsic value (i.e. the value of its assets does not exceed the value of its…

I got a lot of feedback from my January 5 blog entry because of my argument that the implementation of the reforms proposed in the Third Plenum all but guarantees that growth rates in China will slow down. For that reason I thought it might…

By Willem Buiter This post first appeared on Vox Fiscal sustainability has become a hot topic as a result of the European sovereign debt crisis, but it matters in normal times, too. This column argues that financial sector reforms are…

Credit underwriters pride themselves in their ability to cut lending when they sense that economic fundamentals have changed for the worse. For example one often hears bankers talking about passing on deals in 2007 because of "not liking…

Five or six years ago, a few skeptics first started pointing out that the credit dynamics underlying Chinese growth was creating an unsustainable increase in debt. This, they warned, would ultimately undermine the banking system and cause…