This is an astonishing video in China with Hugh Hendry, the money manager who is bearish on China who I profiled earlier this month.  In it, he shows us building after building after building – all of them massive and all of them empty.  And you see yet dozens of others still in construction in [...]

I saw this post with cool pictures on popping bubbles and I thought about Alan Greenspan.  Sir Alan says you cannot recognize bubbles until after they have burst.  I think that’s nonsense – certainly in the case of the “Great Credit Bubble.”
Here’s a quote from the article for you inspired by the former Fed Chairman:
“…bubbles. [...]

The fundamentals in Asia are much stronger than they are in the U.S. or in Europe. This bodes well for a recovery in the region.  Nevertheless, there is reason to worry because here is a video warning about an Asian-wide bubble in the making. I have warned about the Chinese bubble.  Frederic Neumann talks about [...]

During Alan Greenspan’s tenure at the helm of the Federal Reserve, he was often accused of using monetary policy to target asset markets so as to keep the party going.  In short, Alan Greenspan was seen by many, including myself, as the bubble blower-in-chief. All of this came to an end with the very hard [...]

I have been making bullish noises of late, but I am fully cognizant of all the downside risks.  So for the sake of presenting both sides to this argument, I want to highlight the ‘dark’ side in this post based on a book I have just read.
If you are an American investor or just an [...]

Last night I featured a video from Jon Stewart that skewered CNBC, and specifically Jim Cramer. The video is quite funny as Jon Stewart’s show is a comedy show.

However, since that segment aired, Jon Stewart has decided to end the comedy and take a much harder and more serious tone on this issue. Today I would like to highlight last night’s Jon Stewart interview with Jim Cramer because it is not funny. It is an indictment of CNBC, of Jim Cramer, and of the entire financial media as a complicit enabler of the most prolific credit bubble in history.

Make no bones about it, Manhattan real estate prices have been in an extreme bubble.  With stock prices down and Wall Street shedding jobs massively, this has come to an end.
With sales prices of Manhattan apartments having tumbled by perhaps a quarter in just the past few months, pinpointing the bottom has become a [...]

As recession takes hold, European citizens are starting to ask questions about how they were led into this, the deepest downturn in three-quarters of a century. The leading Spanish daily El Pais published a very thoughtful article today asking how things had unravelled so quickly and so spectacularly in Spain, previously one of the fastest growing economies in Europe.

These are the same questions that one must ask in the United States, Britain and Ireland regarding their own property bubbles. And, in view of recent turmoil in astern Europe, I suspect similar answers will be sought there as well.

This first part in a series of articles lays out the statistics of bubble and bust, demonstrating the scale of the bubble in Spain and it also makes a number of suggestion as to how to prevent a recurrence. You should note that this article points out Spain’s helplessness due to its lack of control over interest rates as a key impediment to solving the problem. Below is my translation of the article:

As a result of falling oil prices and the global financial crisis a considerable fear has developed that Dubai, which has led a very expansive building policy in recent years, would have problems servicing its debt.

This week’s Barron’s magazine highlights the abysmal state of the Manhattan real estate market. Manhattan was one of the last bubble markets to burst. Now, things are unraveling quickly, particularly at the high end. Some experts see another 30% down before the carnage is over. The trigger for the bubble’s bursting came in the form of Lehman Brothers, making the NY real estate market another reminder of how badly the Lehman situation was handled by Paulson, Bernanke and Geithner.