Electing the Janitor-in-Chief Can't Borrow on Your Home? Whip out the Credit Card! Deficits as High as an Elephant's Eye Can You Count to 41? Chairs, Moving, and Tony Bennett This week we survey the economic landscape that the new president will inherit. It is a polite understatement to say that...
Thoughts on the Continuing Crisis Fool Me Once, Shame on You Delinquencies and Foreclosures Spike UP Unemployment Rises to 6.1% Action Is Needed Now Annapolis, La Jolla and Wedding Videos We are entering the next stage of the credit crisis, and one which is potentially more troubling than what we have...
Introduction We are in a world far different than the one I learned about in economic text books. As I have written, the shadow banking system of hedge funds and CDOs, CLOs, PIPES, etc. have created a new financing economic reality far different than the traditional banking system was just 20 years ago...
Introduction Who should we blame for the problems in the credit markets? This week in Outside the Box my good friend Barry Ritholtz takes on the task of pointing his prodigious finger at the guilty parties. As he notes, there is plenty of guilt to go around. This is a problem that is going to stay with...
The Panic of 2007 Muddle Through or End of the World? An Alphabet Soup of Credit Turning Nuclear Waste Into Gold (and Back Again!) Mrs. Watanabe and the Hedge Fund Connection The Rating Agency Blame Game Where Do We Go From Here? Hedge Funds to the Rescue! Warren Buffett Needs to Take Over Moody's...
The Mortgage Pig in the Python Inflation is Baked into the CPI Numbers The Mortgage Pig in the Python Housing Starts Look to Stop A Few Thoughts on the Recent Credit Crisis Half of All Hedge Funds Gone? Golf, Weddings, and Europe With the economy increasingly looking like it will slow down materially...
Fun in the Subprime Summer Hot Fun In The Summertime Collateralized Loan Obligations The Economic Outlook for Leveraged Credits The New Mickey Mouse Club Planes, Trains and Automobiles This week I am already in Maine and getting ready for a weekend of fishing with my son Trey, so I am going to take off...
$250 Billion in Subprime Losses? Is the subprime mortgage market collapsing before our eyes, or did we avoid a disaster as Bear Stearns stepped up to the plate with $3.2 billion to help its ailing funds? As we will see from the data, the problems in the subprime world are not over. The Fat Lady has not...