May 2008

The credit crunch has claimed the heads of many a financial market since it was prematurely marked as 'contained' to subprime loans. These markets include jumbo mortgage loans, Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs), asset backed…

Wikipedia has a great entry on the subprime housing bubble for anyone who wants a primer on the bubble and a subprime housing bubble timeline. Follow the link here. This a pretty comprehensive entry with some pretty heady stuff and a lot…

Caroline Baum was asking in her column today: "How can a 2 percent funds rate be appropriately calibrated to promote moderating inflation when inflation is currently rising at almost 4 percent?" The answer: it can't. The Fed is all about…

The United States has gone from saving an average of 8-10% of income for decades to zero or negative savings today. If you look at this chart of 12-month rolling average monthly data, it looks like people actually saved more as inflation…

A great article on the website Safe Haven asks the important question: Can you trust the government's data. I had the same question in a post called "Last week's GDP numbers." Here's what Michael Pento has to say in his article:The…

A leading Spansh newspaper, ABC, reported today that Spanish growth is decelerating quickly. According to the paper, year-on-year growth slowed from 3.5% to 2.7% while quarter-on-quarter, growth was only 0.3% versus 0.8% in the previous…

The blogger Mish is on to the Commercial Real Estate (CRE) downturn. His latest blog entry,WSJ Report: Less Shopping = Fewer Malls, shows that both the WSJ and the FT are reporting a fall in CRE prices.The Financial Times is reporting a…

Well, even though the data in the real economy is looking pretty bad. There is good news. The Ted Spread is at a 9-month low. That should be very supportive of capital markets over the near term."Lending confidence at banks rose to the…

I don't know if you caught the Bloomberg article about the $35 billion in missing writedowns, but I thought it was about time I exposed it. Bloomberg news says:Banks and securities firms, reeling from record losses resulting from the…

As you know, I am looking at the UK and Spain as the epicenter for the next leg down in the housing bubble. Spain suffered massive overbuilding while the UK had a huge run-up in prices.The Blogger at UK Bubble is on to something in her…