Credit Writedowns

Highlights The US dollar is lower against most currencies with the European currencies leading.  Talk of an EU rescue package for Greece on the order of 55 bln euros has contributed to the moves helping to trigger stops.  The…

The Financial Times has caught wind of a letter sent by U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to to the EU’s Michel Barnier. In only thinly-veiled language Mr. Geithner accused the EU of financial protectionism for the way Brussels…

Seasonally-adjusted jobless claims dipped 6,000 to 462,000 for the week ending 6 Mar 2010. This is significantly lower than the revised 498,000 number we saw two weeks prior. Nevertheless, 4-week average jobless claims are still over…

So why did we rescue this institution with a massive bailout? Elizabeth Warren, who chairs the Congressional Oversight panel of the TARP program, doesn't understand any more than taxpayers do. This is another example of the malinvestment…

Canada reported a larger than expected trade surplus earlier today.  At C$0.8 bln, it was four times larger than expected and the December figures were revised to show a C$0.1 bln surplus instead of a C$0.2 bln deficit.  Canada…

I hadn’t seen an advance release of the January German export data, when I wrote the following on Tuesday, honest injun I hadn’t: Well, this is only a hypothesis. But if the hypothesis has any validity we should be able to make some…

FT.com – Spain has the means to avoid Greece's fate FT.com – Mohamed El-Erian – How to handle the sovereign debt explosion BofA under regulatory pressure to shrink: report| Reuters Second Lien Writedowns, II « Rortybomb Discouraged…

August 2009 was the high point of American’s satisfaction with the economy during Barack Obama’s tenure. Interestingly, this meshes with the data on the ground. In a recent interview, Simoleon Sense quoted James Montier as saying that…

This is pretty cool. Now I know why my mother told me to stay away from power.  

The question of fiscal sustainability looms large at the moment - not just in the peripheral nations of the eurozone, but also in the UK, the US, and Japan. More restrictive fiscal paths are being proposed in order to avoid rapidly rising…