credit-bubble
Bank Stress Tests are a Complete Farce!
Let’s hear it for the bankers! They only need another $75 billion in extra capital by November in order to stay alive. Nice work, boys! The NY Times reported today that ten of the nineteen bank holding companies subjected to regulators’ stress tests, the banks deemed “too big to fail,” will need to raise extra [...]
Still Heading for the Abyss
Stock markets across this troubled planet rocketed ahead late this week – mainly on Thursday – because it appears that the world’s largest economies are slowing down as they approach the abyss. But, what jubilant investors are missing is that we’re still headed for the abyss – the economic trajectory has not changed. Extremely tough [...]
Timmy’s Big Week
U.S. Treasury secretary Timothy Geithner had a very big week. In February, the panicked American public and their clueless representatives in Congress saw a timid and overwhelmed Geithner fumbling and bumbling his way through a vaguely defined plan to rescue the banking system from all of the toxic securities purchased – with borrowed funds – [...]
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 [...]
Concerned Clowns
Unfortunately, poor innocent clowns are being mistaken for bankers.
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 [...]
Main Marbles
- No categories
