June 2008

From the Wall Street Journal: Florida Sues CountrywideThe Florida attorney general has filed a lawsuit against Countrywide Financial Corp. and its chief executive, Angelo Mozilo, alleging that the company engaged in deceptive and unfair…

The following are the links regarding the global credit crunch that have been recently added to the Credit Crisis Timeline. The full timeline is accessible hereLatest Additions2008 06 18 Subprime Losses Top $396 Billion on Brokers'…

Bill Gross, Pimco's founder and Chief Inestment Strategist is bold. In the past, he has argued for extreme measures to bailout subprime, questioned the CPI and said a lot more over the past few years. Now he's calling for a President Obama…

The Vancouver Sun is on a roll today. They have another post on ICBC that makes for interesting reading. Frankly, I don't know what to make of it. But it makes for a good read. Chinese bank has market cap twice that of JPMorgan First,…

I am firmly in the deflation camp. I worry about inflation over the short-term, but I still think the long-term threat to the global economy is deflation because asset price deflation will usher in deflationary forces. Nevertheless, there…

I ran a short poll over the last week and the results are in. Readers at Credit Writedowns expect house prices in the U.S. to fall well in excess of 30%. From where I sit, this makes a lot of sense (I voted too: for a 30-50% fall). If…

Bear markets are not an orgy of pain with indices going straight down. Along the way, there are always brief rallies which bring optimism that the worst is over.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard writes in today's Telegraph of the BIS annual report, which is unusually cautious about the global economy. His article makes for sobering reading.Bill White, the departing chief economist at the BIS, in writing his…

In this weeks Barron's, Louise Yamada writes that financials in the U.S. have not fallen nearly enough in respect to their meteoric rise in the U.S. indices. She predicts further pain in the sector to where they represent less than a…

Peter Schiff, the investor and author, is a controversial figure. He tells of an America that has lost its way through shedding manufacturing and its habit of saving money. His conclusion is that the U.S. is not a place where he wants his…