credit-bubble
Panic is the New Black
It’s time to panic again. The first headline I saw this morning screamed “Bloody Friday,” it was in giant, bold blue letters on Marketwatch’s home page. The NY Times ran “Global Shares Plummet on Gloomy Data.” Blood and gloom? That’s no way to start a Friday. I thought those depressing headlines were meant for [...]
The Lending Tree
The Lending Tree grew from a mere sapling just after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 into a giant monster that blocked out the sun, eventually toppling under its own girth, crushing the borrowed possessions in the home that it shared a lawn with.
The reason I mention 9/11 is that Americatown went into a short and [...]
Prophetic Cartoon - Housing Crushes Economy
I created this cartoon in 2006. The following year marked the top of the real estate market, and as it turns out, the end of excessive financial leverage. In early 2005 I began studying the effects that the explosion of exotic loan products and the deterioration of lending standards were having on home prices. I [...]
Dollar Sniffers- by Greg Strid
Crude oil futures swooned to a hair above $105 a barrel
before closing at $109.71 yesterday. At the same time,
the US dollar rallied and held most of its gains against
major currencies. (The greenback is trading at a seven-
month high against the euro and a two-year high versus
the British pound.)
As far as the US dollar’s rise [...]
Six Months of Job Losses and the Credit Bubble
Poof! That was the sound of approximately 62,000 jobs vanishing from the U.S. economy last month. June marks the sixth straight month of job losses. As for the month of May’s half percentage point spike in the unemployment rate to 5.5 percent - it stayed the same for June as well. Whaddya know? That huge [...]
Market Meets Reality
The stock market met reality yesterday – it did not go well. Record high oil prices and a warning about inflation form the Federal Reserve smacked sobriety into U.S. investors. Oil traded at $135 a barrel and the minutes from the Fed’s late April policy meeting implied that further interest rate cuts are unlikely [...]
AIG Needs $12.5 Billion - Time to Pay Attention, Wall Street!
The stock market rumbled ahead on greased rails of delusion cheered by the glimmer of light perhaps flickering at the end of the credit crisis tunnel. But, the news Thursday afternoon signaled that the frail twinkling they thought meant hope may be an oncoming freight train instead.
After the closing bell Thursday, American International Group, the [...]
The credit bubble blew up in ‘05
Sales of new homes fell 2.8 percent from December’s levels, and the median price of an American castle dipped to $215,000, which amounts to a 15 percent decline from year ago levels. I am actually tired of writing about the continuing dismal saga that is this nation’s housing market.
I wrote a rather long-winded essay in [...]
Beware the Naked Emperor- by Greg Strid
The worst possible employment numbers were revealed
before the stock market’s opening bell this morning. The
U.S. economy managed to create a paltry 18,000 new
jobs in the last month of 2007. The unemployment rate
jumped from 4.7 to 5 percent, although average hourly
wages expanded by 0.4 percent- which is a good deal
more than was expected, and raises fears [...]
