September 2008

Everyone and his brother is talking about the bailout plan from U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. I am not going to add my voice to the cacophony just yet, except to remind readers that the executive branch and the Federal Reserve are…

Recently I wrote a post on the safety of investment assets in the wake of the Lehman and AIG meltdowns. Even still, retail and individual investors are noticeably nervous about the safety of their funds.Last night on the radio, I heard a…

Marshall Auerback here.Equity investors, perhaps unlike credit investors, don't get the fundamental insolvency of the financial sector, an artifact of mega-leverage.This is a culture that responds to visual clues and marketing jingles.…

Today, after the markets closed, in another Friday Night Special, the FDIC announced the failure of Ameribank. This represents the 12th bank failure this year and the 14th since the credit crisis began last August.See my list of Bankrupt…

Why did Lehman really fail? The equity window is effectively closed for most financial services companies. This fact was the true trigger for the meltdown in AIG and Lehman and the problems at WaMu, HBOS and Merrill Lynch. Moreover, it…

Credit Writedowns is a blog that updates you with the latest on finance, economics, markets and politics. If you sign up for our daily newsletter, you will receive daily emails from us on those topics. You can unsubscribe at any time. To…

Given the fact that the regulatory authorities in the U.S. and the UK have taken the unusually manipulative step of banning all short sales of financial institutions outright, it bears remembering that all actions have consequences, both…

The latest government intervention into the capitalist system is the move by the UK and U.S. governments to ban short-selling of all financial stocks outright.In the wake of the severe market turbulence unleashed by the failure of Lehman…

The bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, with assets of over $600 billion is the largest in U.S. history. Wikipedia has catalogued the list of the largest U.S. bankruptcies of all time. (Hat tip: Börsennotizbuch) Drum roll, please. The current…

The meltdown of the world's largest insurer AIG (AIG) makes the stakes of this credit crisis plain to all. In my view, the AIG situation and the subsequent turmoil in financial markets could have been avoided. The markets were clearly on…