Post Tagged with: "bankruptcy"
Making Money from Municipal Waste
Frederick Sheehan is the author of Panderer to Power: The Untold Story of How Alan Greenspan Enriched Wall Street and Left a Legacy of Recession (McGraw-Hill, 2009). Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, is defaulting; Half Moon Bay, California, is disincorporating; and the City of Miami, Florida, declared a "state of fiscal urgency," then broke contracts with workers. Yet,
Delay and Pray, and Then?
By Jake Weber While it may be hard to believe, the housing market hasn’t been the worst-performing real estate sector in terms of price. The index for the Case-Shiller Composite-20 index for residential real estate peaked in July 2006, and as of May 2010, the index had dropped by 29.1%. Considering how dismal the recent
Do sovereign debt ratios matter?
By Michael Pettis In the past few weeks I have been getting a lot of questions about serial sovereign defaults and how to predict which countries will or won’t suspend debt payments or otherwise get into trouble. The most common question is whether or not there is a threshold of debt (measured, say, against total
The Debt Supercycle
By John Mauldin. I have been writing about The End Game for some time now. And writing a book of the same title. Consequently, I have been thinking a lot about how the credit crisis evolved into the sovereign debt crisis, and how it all ends. Today we explore a few musings I have had
Misunderstanding Modern Monetary Theory
Paul Krugman wrote a post today regarding MMT called "I Would Do Anything For Stimulus, But I Won’t Do That (Wonkish)." The gist of Krugman’s post was to refute Modern Monetary Theory’s view on money and deficits. Krugman writes: Right now, the real policy debate is whether we need fiscal austerity even with the economy
Are the rich the biggest strategic defaulters?
It would seem so from the statistics compiled by the New York Times. The article leads in by suggesting the rich are ‘losing their home but given the talk about strategic default earlier in the year (see here), you should wonder whether these are defaults due to distress or out of sheer financial calculation. This
Are Iceland’s Banks About To Go Bust Once Again?
It seems so if you read the latest from the Financial Times (hat tip Marshall Auerback): Iceland’s banking sector is facing a fresh wave of losses after a court ruling raised doubts over the legality of billions of dollars of loans. But here’s the thing. The Supreme Court outlawed loans tied to foreign exchange rates
May’s FDIC cease and desist and other administrative orders
Below is a partial list of May 2010 FDIC enforcement decisions and orders. I have only included cease-and-desist orders, prompt corrective action notices and termination of insurance orders as these are the signs of banking system distress. FINAL ORDERS ISSUED PURSUANT TO SECTION 8(b), 12 U.S.C. § 1818(b) (Cease-and-Desist) Butte Community Bank, Chico, CA; FDIC-10-097b;
Stat of the day: Illinois takes over from California as state most likely to default
While California has been the poster boy for state budgetary woes, Illinois has moved into the top spot as the US state most likely to default on its debt. To avoid default more cuts are going to be necessary. See recent posts by me and BBH’s Marc Chandler on how this impacts GDP. Also see
PIMCO on British National Solvency
PIMCO is out with its secular outlook for the UK. PIMCO Portfolio Manager and EVP Michael Amey comments on growth and inflation and their effect on UK assets in the new normal of deleveraging, greater regulation and de-globalisation. One comment he made on default risk was quite informative: Q: PIMCO has identified sovereign risk as
Buyers Beware: Municipal Bond Prices Don’t Reflect Financial Stress
Muni investors are acting as if there is no default risk in the municipal bond market based on yields. It’s a bit like the conditions in the eurozone before the sovereign debt crisis. The Wall Street Journal reports: Investors are ignoring warning signs in the $2.8 trillion municipal-bond market, raising the risk of a reckoning,
Deepwater Horizon Spill Size Estimates Keep Growing, As Do Costs
John is one of the ten most followed writers at Seeking Alpha and a Senior Contributor at TheStreet.com and Real Money. Last week I tried to bracket the cost exposure for BP as a result of the Deepwater Horizon well head blowout and explosion. That attempt proposed a very wide bracket, from $9 billion to