I am a contrarian by nature. That has its pluses and minuses. As a contrarian, I am constantly thinking to myself, “but, is that really true?” As a result, I often find myself recognizing a trend before it catches on or standing aside as others become enmeshed in bubble-think. Those are pretty good [...]

China and AsiaSo, the Olympics are over. What now for China? Despite the recent news of China’s need for an enormous stimulus package, Asia is still doing relatively well – far better than either Europe or North America. Sovereign Wealth Funds are flush with cash and consumers are beginning to spend in China. [...]

Here’s an interesting statistic from the OCRegister in California. What are the twenty wealthiest cities in the United States? Pleasanton, CA tops the list with a median household income of $113,345. See the chart below for the other 19. I counted nine in California, five in Texas and two in the [...]

At the end of last week, the warning came. The Chinese officially warned Hank Paulson et al. that they better get their act together on Fannie and Freddie. The Chinese own a ton of GSE paper and they would be hopping mad to see their investments lose value.
The implicit threat is that the Chinese [...]

It’s time to get positive. A good friend of mine from Toronto was telling me today how depressing the drip-drip of bad news regarding the economy, the markets and housing is becoming. The housing bust has been going on for nearly two years and it seems like a drama that has no end. [...]

The S&P/Case-Shiller housing index is out for prices for June 2008. So, it’s that time of the month again — let’s play the Case-Shiller time machine game.
Basically, prices in the U.S. housing market have been falling for about two years now (the index topped out in July 2006) because housing prices had moved way [...]

PIMCO, the brainchild of Bill Gross and now owned by the German insurance giant Allianz, is concerned enough about the bankruptcy of Roskilde Bank in Denmark to have sent the following e-mail out to its clients. I have put important parts in red not already highlighted in the text.
Note that the bailout plan involves [...]

As far back as May, I had warned that commercial property was destined for a bust — collateral damage in the real economy. In particular, I mentioned the U.S. commercial real estate (CRE) market as a particular problem for local and regional banks, which have large exposure to the CRE market. In May, I [...]

The past few weeks I have been chronicling how Europe is fast catching up to the United States in terms of the magnitude of the housing bust and its effects on its economies. I’d like to turn back to the United States and Northern California, which has been hit hard by the bust.
Below are [...]

As the Democratic and Republican Conventions have begun, most Americans are going to get political overload as they are inundated with a media blitz by the U.S. presidential candidates and the inane trivialities of our media-driven political process. Since I don’t watch television, I am somewhat immune to most of what goes on. [...]