Are water wars in our future? PhysOrg Bailing Out On America Economic Policy Institute (hat tip Jojo). On the disposition of a $100 billion contract for new tanker aircraft. SEC, Justice Scrutinize AIG on Swaps Accounting Wall Street Journal. Trouble for AIG, and could it have broader implications for the CDS market? Foreclosures Hit The […]
Read more...An institutional investor passed along these initial estimates of the damage that the Street will take from the downgrade of MBIA and Ambac, Bear in mind that these presumably do not become operative until Moody’s joins S&P in deeming both concerns’ insurance subs to be AA. These loss forecasts are only those to banks and […]
Read more...So at least one big rating agency, Standard & Poor’s, finally got some nerve and downgraded the two big monolines, MBIA and Ambac . Note that this downgrade applies only to the insurance subsidiary, but that is the critical entity, the one that provides debt guarantees. From Bloomberg: MBIA Inc. and Ambac Financial Group Inc., […]
Read more...It really is very hard to come up with decent proposals to contend with our highly integrated, international, essential, and not-so-well functioning financial system. While some have developed general guidelines that sound attractive, figuring out how to implement them is quite another matter. For instance, in a recent Financial Times comment, former Treasury secretary Larry […]
Read more...Before we get to my rant, let’s give a quick update on Lehman. The bank had a better day than yesterday, with the stock up a tad more in large part due to supportive words by highly respected investment bank analyst Guy Moszkowski who said that the notion that Lehman would come to the same […]
Read more...We have discussed the role of fuel subsidies in distorting demand for oil and therefore adding to price pressures. We’ve also noted that as oil prices have spiked, the cost of these subsidies in some countries is becoming untenable. Both Indonesia and Malaysia have raised end user gas prices. One of the largest countries giving […]
Read more...Mobile phones expose human habits BBC Data Retention Effectively Changes the Behavior of Citizens in Germany Florian Sander McCain: I’d Spy on Americans Secretly, Too Wired Revived Paper Mill Brings a Town Back With It New York Times Bush Administration touts tax cuts with typical misleading propaganda ataxingmatter Profiting From Global Change: An Interview with […]
Read more...The New York Times describes how some big-money players are skipping the commodities market and going directly to being hard asset players by buying farmland and grain elevators. This is hardly new (I know of one global macro fund that was making ag related investments two years ago) but the Times piece gives the impression […]
Read more...David Lukken, the acting chief of the CFTC, said today that while his agency is set up to detect market manipulation, it is less well equipped to gauge the impact of a flood of new speculative money into the commodities markets. However, he said the agency intends to get to the bottom of the question. […]
Read more...We had said that the melodrama with the big bond insurers MBIA and Ambac early this year had failed to solve their underlying problems and was merely postponing the inevitable by a few months. Readers may recall that an effort by New York insurance superintendent Eric Dinallo to get the monolines to raise substantial amounts […]
Read more...Just when the Fed thought it had gotten financial markets turbulence under control, conditions start to worsen. Lehman is looking wobbly and markers are signaling increased worries about interbank funding. Bloomberg tells us that a key indicator of bank willingness to lend, the spread between three month Libor and the forward overnight index swap, is […]
Read more...A reader forwarded me a Morgan Stanley fixed income research report wrap, which included a discussion of the role of gasoline and oil price subsidies in certain developing countries. The price gives an good overview of the role these defacto consumer price discounts have played, and argues that they will have to be cut back […]
Read more...I had to feature this article from the Guardian not only for its content but for its particularly vivid writing .But the specter of a market implosion is quite stirring, in a perverse way. Just get a load of the headline: “Wrecking ball hits housing market“. From the Guardian: Jeepers. What a way to start […]
Read more...Elephants caught in Sri Lanka war BBC Novel bacterial species found trapped in Greenland’s ice PennState. Oh, and it;s 120,000 years old too. Carbon Emissions Across the United States New York Times. A good interactive graphic. Cheney builds an explosive case Asia Times. More on the Administration’s desperate efforts to pin something on Iran. LBO […]
Read more...This is one of the most irresponsible financial actions I have seen in quite a while. You can argue about the merits of paying dividends when a company is losing money. It’s usually a bad idea, although a defense can be made that if you are going to have to go sell equity, your stock […]
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