Credit Writedowns

FiveThirtyEight: Throw All The Bums Out? Bad Idea. China Drawing High-Tech Research From U.S. – NYTimes.com Arizona Drops Children’s Health Program – NYTimes.com Hillaryland – Swampland – TIME.com China tries to cool yuan…

I recorded the video segment below on on RT America on Wednesday night (Notice my green tie for St. Patrick's Day!). The overall gist of the clip was that the currency battle now brewing between China and the U.S. is mostly a political…

UPDATE: 19 MAR 2010: Given the debate on China and its currency peg, I thought this post from November 2008 would be relevant. It called for a new world order centered around a new monetary system. This idea has gained some currency as it…

Here is a good video from Marketplace Senior Editor Paddy Hirsch explaining the mechanics of the now infamous Lehman Brothers 105 transactions. One or two tidbits, first. Even though Hirsch mentions Lehman undertook these transactions to…

Highlights The US dollar is firmer against most major currencies.  The euro is trading near the week’s lows while the safe haven Swiss franc is up on the day amidst ongoing concerns about Greece.  That’s despite comments from…

China and commodities bull Jim Rogers thinks the economy is going to eventually run out of gas by 2012. While he doesn’t call this a double dip, he does say that “the next time it’s going to be worse because we’ve shot all of our bullets.”…

Notable quotes in this 5 minute segment: "They don’t want to look in the mirror. America doesn’t have a China problem. It really has a savings problem. America has the biggest shortfall of national savings of any leading country in…

Here’s how I see things playing out: Congress looks at this report and concurs that the key to ending slower global growth is to correct global imbalances via a Chinese currency revaluation. Fair enough. However, individual…

In late 2007 the global economy began to stumble, slipping into the abyss of a deep recession and financial panic. We are only now recovering from this stumble, in large part due to an unprecedented level of fiscal and monetary stimulus.…

In reading Scott Sumner’s take on the China currency peg dilemma, I see that both he and Paul Krugman hit on the fundamental problem in the debate: reserves. Everyone is talking about the peg as if relaxing the peg will be the magic bullet…