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Looking at today’s selling wave, a number of bank shares are down over 10% including Washington Mutual (WM), National City (NCC), Wachovia (WB), Zion (ZION). Many other shares are trading well into negative territory with share prices below $10 including KeyCorp (KEY), Fifth Third (FITB), Dearborn (DEAR), and Huntington Bancshares (HBAN). These are [...]

Given the fact that the FDIC lost a massive $10.7 billion on the IndyMac transaction, I am re-posting this blurb from July.

I said then, I still believe, the FDIC needs a lot more money or it will be bust. Sheila Bair has already requested $500 billion. See the WSJ article “Bill Seeks to Let FDIC Borrow up to $500 Billion.”

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Dean Baker has been on record since at least 2002 as predicting both the mortgage bust and the Fannie-Freddie collapse.
“If housing prices fall back in line with the overall rate price level, as they have always done in the past, it will eliminate more than $2 trillion in paper wealth and considerably worsen [...]

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I might have egg all over my face quicker than quick about my $150 oil call. It seems the Fannie-Freddie bailout chatter is spooking stock markets, currency markets and the oil market. This is going to be a volatile day.
The dollar dropped to a one-week low against the euro and headed for a [...]

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Yesterday, oil fell the most in one day since the start of the Gulf War in January 1991 to close at $136.03 in New York trading. Now is the time to evaluate whether we have seen the top in oil prices? On Thursday in my post “Oil close to $146” I said,
The price action [...]

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One cannot expect double digit returns from the U.S. market over the medium term as there are significant headwinds impeding that from high P/E ratios, reversion to the mean, consumer price inflation, credit deflation, high debt, to a housing bust.
That said, I am not particularly bearish over the short-term. We have had a huge [...]

$1.6 trillion! This is the figure that a Bridgewater Associates study has come up with. I caught this article when I was looking for the original German-language version of a story that MarketWatch exposed regarding the Swiss banks’ need for more capital. (see MarketWatch here and my analysis here).

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Oil tightened its squeeze on world economies today soaring to a new high of over $145 a barrel. Eurozone growth is also expected to take a further hit at lunchtime when the European Central Bank is expected to raise rates to curb inflation.
In London, the continuing threat of an attack on Iran, the [...]

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The well-deserved euphoria over the European Championship in football has brought welcome relief to Spanish consumers, weighed down by a slow economy. However, global economies have not decoupled from the U.S. slowdown. European economies are suffering, Denmark having already declared recession.
In this piece I am going to take a look at the Spanish economy and [...]

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I have uploaded the associated PDF for this teleconference. Click here for PDF.
U.S. Global Investors Exclusive Webcast: Where is the Boom and the Doom?
SAN ANTONIO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–U.S. Global Investors (NASDAQ:GROW), a boutique investment adviser specializing in natural resources and emerging markets, will host a webcast titled, “Where is the Boom and the Doom?” on Friday, [...]