ShareThis is just in from the FDIC (emphasis added below). It should make clear that the banking system is still weak:
Credit quality declined sharply for loan commitments of $20 million or more held by multiple federally supervised institutions, according to the 32nd annual review of Shared National Credits (SNC).
The credit risk of these large [...]

ShareLast week, I highlighted some of the ideas of Australian economist Steve Keen in my post, “Politics and reform: Say I’m a politician….”  Keen is of the Minsky camp and he believes that an unsustainable debt bubble has build up in the industrialized world which can only be brought to heel through a ‘debt jubilee.’
Below [...]

ShareIn late June, I posted two items China’s present growth story is built on malinvestment and Chinese stock market bubble inflating, on the building bubble in Chinese lending and asset markets.  The crux of the pots was that China, in its efforts to reflate the economy to meet very high growth short-term targets and start [...]

ShareCredit is still tight despite the low Libor rates and other signs that market stress has died down. Case and point is an item I ran across on the Norwegian site E24. Apparently, Amsterdam is losing revenue as its prostitutes in the red light district cannot get credit.  Here is my translation of the story:
The [...]

ShareCredit in Spain is contracting at an unprecedented rate, down 33% in the first quarter as Spain faces a housing bust and near 20% unemployment. Below is my translation of part of a Spanish-language article explaining the situation.
Consumer credit fell by 33.7% in the first quarter, to €5.796 billion, and late payments rose to 17.54%, [...]

ShareFT Alphaville is reporting that the credit rating agency Fitch puts credit card losses at 10.4% of outstanding loans.  This is a record.  Bad news if you are a credit card company.  So, what does one do in that situation?  You raise rates on customers that are paying, silly.
Citi’s rate increases emerged on the day [...]

ShareLate last year, I predicted that China, as a major exporter to the West, would feel a huge impact from the meltdown in the global economy, taking it’s growth rate down to 2% (See Top ten predictions for the 2009 global economy). Forgetting about the fact that data are highly suspect in China, I see [...]

ShareThis is a very good explanatory piece from CNBC on how counterparty credit risk makes the credit default swap market a financial weapon of mass destruction.  Note they are not talking about eliminating the CDS market, but merely regulating and standardizing it to prevent a potentially catastrophic domino effect.

ShareReuters is reporting that the dissident Chrysler lender group has disbanded. Apparently, the lenders have finally figured out that they have zero chance of getting what they want as I have been saying all along (see posts here and here).  Let’s see what is in store at General Motors now.
A group of Chrysler LLC’s dissident [...]

ShareOf course you know I think credit cards are going to produce a tsunami of writedowns, right? Things are looking more and more like that tsunami is right around the corner:
Credit card writedowns soared to record levels in February, representing an all-time high in the 20-year history of the Moody’s Credit Card Index, as [...]