I was catching up on other blogs and saw that Ed Harrison has a clip of Boy George “Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?” as his theme song of the week just passed. I think this is a bit more evocative of what we have been through (trust me, just play it): : The […]
Read more...We’ve said for some time that European banks are (believe it or not) in even worse shape on average than their US peers, although the public at large is far more aware of the problems here by virtue of our financial system having hit the wall so spectacularly. While US firms waded into risky waters […]
Read more...Equity analyst and market commentator James Bianco of Arbor Research e-maileda a discussion of the breakdown of interbank lending to us along with a few others, His note illustrates a point made by FT Alphaville a couple of weeks ago that we have harped on since, namely, that central banks’ efforts to provide liquidity to […]
Read more...Oh boy, MetLife has just put a huge bull’s eye on itself saying “We cannot afford to be downgraded!” While the role of evil shorts in driving down financial company price is overdone (many firms’ shares should be trading at lousy levels, given the terrible outlook for earnings and dividends), this announcement will lead the […]
Read more...Another sign of market panic: even though Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are now officially wards of the state and the Treasury has assured that they will not fall into a negative equity standing, the general credit market stress and flight to quality means that their mortgage backed bonds are trading at elevated spreads. However, […]
Read more...The Dow rallied over 900 points to as high as 283 and is now in positive territory. Reader M passed us this report: A well informed investor I speak to regularly relays that the 3:45 PM speech by Paulson, coming out of the IMF meetings, will include the roll out of a joint clearing mechanism […]
Read more...England, which has been more candid in talking about the financial crisis than other countries (the governor of the Bank of England has said, for instance, that living standards will fall) issued a blunt assessment earlier today. The scary update is that even overnight lending is starting to break down. From the Financial Times: UK […]
Read more...Hedge fund margin calls appear to be playing a role, perhaps a substantial one, in the precipitous fall in stock prices. One hedge fund manager told us yesterday that a West Coast hedge fund was supposed to have dumped a lot of risky fixed income positions late in the day yesterday. That affected the stock […]
Read more...All I can say is “ouch”. The theory is that for every loser there is a winner, but in this market with financial players at risk of failure due to hits to weak equity bases and/or runs, we have a serious asymmetry. A significant loss to an important intermediary, either directly, via CDS payouts, or […]
Read more...From Bloomberg: U.S. stock exchanges may seek to impose a temporary ban on short sales for individual stocks that plunge as regulators seek to rein in short-selling. The New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq Stock Market may file their proposal with the Securities and Exchange Commission as soon as today, said three people who have […]
Read more...Those who wrote $400 billion plus of protection on Lehman’s credit default swaps had been expected to make a substantial payout in the 80% to 85% of face value range, but the preliminary auction showed even worse results. How the SEC and Treasury had so little clue that Lehman was in such bad shape is […]
Read more...Economist Paul De Grauwe, who has been an astute and harsh critic of central bank’s models and priorities, makes a very simple point and draw a conclusion. Banks are not lending to each other out of mistrust. Various measures to increase liquidity and backstop banks have not made them look any more favorably upon their […]
Read more...Nearly two weeks ago, it was becomimg apparent that central bank liquidity operations were not merely ineffective, but had become counterproductive in getting banks to lend to each other. As FT Althaville noted: Liquidity is being thrown at the system, but it’s just making things worse. By pumping in more money central banks aren’t addressing […]
Read more...Canada rated world’s soundest bank system Reuters. You need to read the rankings. The US is behind Namibia. FTC warns: Financial quagmire bringing out the scammers Network World GE Capital scales back lending Financial Times EU Crippled in Crisis as 27 Governments Confront Single Economy Bloomberg Über-rich count their losses in billions Times Online Yamato […]
Read more...It was bad enough that the Nikkei traded down over 9% today and most of the rest of Asia fell 6% to 8%. But the opening of European markets is a dramatic vertical trajectory down: DJ Stoxx 50 down 8.3%, FTSE down over 10% in five minutes, now down a comparatively modest 9.23%Dax 30 down […]
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