The day has finally arrived. It’s August and time for a holiday in the sun. I am off with the family for a little rest and relaxation through next week. I will be blogging intermittently, so please check back in.
Have a great week.

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Lately, it seems the U.S. economy is flat on its back, with companies going bankrupt left and right. Yet, government statistics say quite the opposite. In the second quarter, the U.S. economy supposedly grew 1.9% annualized q-o-q. Sounds pretty good, huh?
The sceptic in you might be asking, “how did we manage a 1.9% [...]

GDP stats came out for Q2. I’ll get to that in a later post. We had 1.9% growth on the quarter, which was a decent lift from the stimulus package.
But, what is really interesting is that the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), which does the GDP statistics also released revisions of the GDP [...]

Jobless claims hit a 5-year high of 448K last week, leaving everyone under the impression that the employment numbers are deteriorating rapidly. However, the massive increase in jobless claims for the past week is very misleading because actual claims fell.

One reason I believe inflation pressures will slow going forward is that the global economy has already slowed enough to have a measurable impact on oil demand and all commodity prices across the board. As July comes to an end, the month is shaping up to be the worst in commodities for 28 years.
Tumbling [...]

Berkshire Hathaway, the company led by Warren Buffett, is offering a five-year debt deal for the highest spread over treasurys in its history. As Berkshire is a low-risk AAA company, this fact reinforces the magnitude of credit market dislocations.
Even Warren Buffett can’t escape the credit crunch.
Top-rated Berkshire Hathaway Inc. offered the highest yield over [...]

Nationwide Building Society released its monthly house price index for the UK showing an annual rate of decline of 8.1%, the highest since UK house prices began falling last year. This suggests that UK house prices are accelerating through their first year much as they did in the U.S. earlier. Regarding the UK [...]

The major European banks have gotten into the swing of things with their own reporting season. Today, Deutsche Bank and HBOS reported earnings.
Deutsche Bank recorded a pre-tax profit of 642 millioneuros after writedowns of $3.6 billion due to the credit crunch. This takes Deutsche’s total writedowns toover $10 billion since the credit crunch [...]

The number of Americans who have seen their full-time jobs chopped to part time because of weak business has swelled to more than 3.7 million — the largest figure since the government began tracking such data more than half a century ago.-NY Times, A Hidden Toll on Employment: Cut to Part Time, [...]

Trade talks collapse frustrates Africa – Fin24 (Africa is the real loser here in a dispute between the EU, U.S. and China and India)India blamed for Doha collapse by trying to protect poor farmers – Times Online (The finger pointing begins)
Big Bankruptcies Are Piling Up – Deal Book (The real economy is getting [...]