July 2009

S&P upgrades CMBS to AAA week after downgrading to BBB- - Rolfe Winkler Inexplicable. Digg Stops Hijacking Your Twitter Links, Not Sorry About It Agree 100% with this post. Very untrustworthy. Department store sales slip 11%…

13-minute video from the Wall Street Journal. Related stories: Iceland warms to Europe Iceland to hand bank stakes to creditors Iceland’s rehabilitation  

If you haven’t seen any of Jim the Realtor’s videos over at Calculated Risk, you are not getting a feel for what’s happening in residential real estate in America.  The guy really gives the whole housing problem in California a look…

Over the past week, America’s banks have had a bumper earning season, in part courtesy of the Federal Reserve’s accommodative monetary policy. Even before this week, a number of market pundits (including me) began to wonder aloud whether…

This post is going to be a bit wonkish.  I apologize for those of you who are not economics geeks.  Hopefully, you will find it interesting nonetheless. At the urging of my good friend Marshall Auerback, I have been looking into…

On numerous occasions you will have heard me use the term ‘monetizing debt’ to describe what happens when the central bank creates money out of thin air in order to increase reserves in the banking system. The central bank is certainly…

Earnings season is upon us and the Swedish banks have begun reporting earnings. Their results have seen huge writedowns that demonstrate large and continued exposure to souring loans in the Baltics. Handelsbanken and Nordea reported…

This came in overnight via the FT.  Most of the shortfall in revenue is made up through spending cuts.  Below are the relevant paragraphs: The agreement involves cutting nearly $6bn from schools and community colleges and…

No Longer Alone, Ron Paul Fights the Fed - Real Time Economics - WSJ Paul's bill to audit Fed has 274 co-sponsors. Some bailout firms up lobbying spending in 2Q - Yahoo! Finance Increased lobbying plus climb in shares equals no…

This just hit the wires. NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--CIT Group Inc. (NYSE: CIT), a leading provider of financing to small businesses and middle market companies, today announced that it entered into a $3 billion loan facility provided by a…