Warren: Banks have “shattered” our trust

Elizabeth Warren, the chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel to oversee TARP, goes ballistic in this interview with the guys from Tech Ticker. She gets right to the heart of what is wrong with the banking industry.  You can tell she is very passionate about this issue. Take a look.  Below are the videos in

Pesek: Asia is de-coupling

On Monday, I mentioned that the Asian Development Bank Fund was a clear sign that Asia was cutting loose from the west and looking to take care of things domestically.  WIlliam Pesek of Bloomberg News put out a piece this morning echoing those sentiments, but also adding a lot more background regarding the events leading

Mobius: Emerging market stocks are breaking out

For a moment forget that Mark Mobius is talking his own book. He suggests in the video below that we are in the early stages of a new bull market for emerging markets. He does not suggest that it will be off to the races from the word go, however. Mobius thinks we are base-building right now

Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting this weekend

Berkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting is this coming Saturday 2 May 2009 in Omaha, NE at the Qwest Center (details in pdf here).  Given the financial turmoil and all of the hubaloo around Berkshire’s credit rating, it should be a very interesting affair. In conjunction with the Annual meeting, Berkshire CEO Warren Buffett’s son Peter is

Reinhart: Not everybody can be above-average in stress tests

Irrespective of whether one thinks the stress tests used to test the U.S. banking system is a sham (10% unemployment is not a worst-case scenario), the fact of the matter is these tests MUST show some differentiation in order to be credible.  Vincent Reinhart, a former Fed official now at the AEI, makes this case

McCulley: We need the political will to socialize the losses

Paul McCulley of PIMCO made a few comments back in March which caught my attention.  Given how well banks are doing this earnings season, I thought it relevant to quote him here.  The essence of his remarks was this: Deleveraging is a self-reinforcing vicious cycle brought upon by the Paradox of Thrift.  In order to

Statements on Capitol Hill by Geithner and Warren

Below you can watch a video clip of Congressional Oversight Chairperson Elizabeth Warren‘s introductory remarks at a hearing today on Capitol Hill. Afterward, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner responds in a 10-minute open statement

Mike Mayo: writedowns worse than the Great Depression

Despite the fact that I can envisage a cyclical upturn this Winter, the menace of bank writedowns is ever-present. One analyst who has been particularly prescient on warning on this front is Mike Mayo, now working at Calyon. Below David Faber of CNBC talks about a recent prediction by Mayo that writedowns will be even

Will Goldman’s Jim O’Neill change his bullish outlook?

Back in February I posted an article called “The bullish argument for the global economy” highlighting Goldman Sachs’ Chief Economist Jim O’Neill’s bullish view for the economy. O’Neill believed in February that a economic rebound was certainly possible due to fiscal and monetary stimulus. Paul Kasriel has made similar arguments.

While I do agree that fiscal and monetary stimulus have been great and may induce a cyclical rebound, I wanted to point out that he mentioned the Philly Fed Survey and the ISM surveys as potential leading indicators of recovery

Krugman: Geithner Plan “won’t work”

I have the same misgivings about the Public Private Partnership Investment Program that Paul Krugman does. However, I still think it could work in conjunction with all of the other stimulus being applied (at least in inducing a cyclical rebound, which seems to be the goal). Krugman does not. Watch the video to see his

David Rosenberg and Richard Bernstein to leave BOA

Merrill’s Economic Research team has been top notch for years under the leadership of Richard Bernstein and David Rosenberg. Unfortunately for Bank of Aerica, these two gentlemen are jumping ship now that Merrills has been taen over by BOA. I look forward to hearing more from them in their new roles elsewhere

Stephen Roach is still bearish, no recovery until 2010

Recently, I have highlighted the comments of a number of investing gurus, most of whom are fairly positive on the market. This includes Jeremy Grantham, Marc Faber, Bill Fleckenstein, Fred Hickey, Marty Fridson and Steven Leuthold (Louise Yamada is a notable exception). However, when it comes to the global economy, the situation is much murkier, the likes of David Rosenberg at Merrill Lynch/BofA have made the case for continued economic weakness in the United States.

The standard bearer of the global-economy-is-weak-and-needs-rebalancing theme is Stephen Roach. And he is not a tad bullish on the global economy