I read recently two things I thought I might respond to. First was that thanks to the prompt intervention of our glorious leaders to stimulate a la Keynes we have dealt with and escaped the deflationary spiral. Two things about this. First what stimulating did we do? We certainly gave a lot of money to […]

Thanks to Cleo for catching this article at the Telegraph. The Headline is that an influential accounting watchdog has warned that UK banking accounting rules are “fatally flawed”. In a letter sent to the two global accounting standards bodies and the Bank of International Settlement (The BIS – the bankers bank) the author says there

The markets this last week have been acting very much as they did in both the run up to Congress approving the TARP (bail out No. 1) and the agreement of the European bail-out fund (bail out No.2). In both cases the markets were not just falling, but in between outright nose dives, were whipping

The Fed has its big annual meeting in Jackson’s Hole on Friday. Anyone who is anyone will be there. And all the talk will be about QE. Already wags in the financial press are suggesting we will shortly hear the sound of Ben’s helicopter flying over head. This is an hilarious reference to Mr Bernanke

It must be clear by now, to even the most resolute “They are experts, they know what they’re doing”, supporters of our present leaders, that all is NOT well. And maybe, they do NOT have it all in hand. The short version of recent events is that every one of the problems we had earlier

According to MarketWatch (part of the Wall Street Journal empire) Economists they had surveyed had expected New house sales in the U.S. to INCREASE slightly. Does MarketWatch get some perverse pleasure in surveying ONLY the stupiest economists. Because I am finding the joke wearing thin. Existing house sales off a cliff. Durable Goods Orders following

Well after the debale of house sales now we have orders od US manufactured Durable goods. And it too is not at all good. The median growth expected by economists the Bloomberg has surveyed was 3% growth. That’s what economists IN the markets expected on the basis of their huge expertese and years of experience.

Yesterday Standard and Poors downgrafed Ireland’s credit rating one step down from AA to AA- with a continued negative outlook. Meaning further downgrades are quite possible in the next year. S&P’s reasons for the downgrade were concerns that the cost of bailing out Ireland’s financial sector would continue to grow as it has done relentllessly

Huijin, the domestic part of China’s sovereign wealth fund has come in for some criticism from Western banks and experts this morning. Huijin’s crime is that it is going to have a large bond sale to raise money which it is then going to use to re-capitalize some of China’s main banks. So far so

Well the Dow closed the day at 1040. Just above the magic 10k. The Market headline says “at lowest level since July 7th.” But this misses the point. The point about today’s close is not that it is down at the 10k level nor even that today’s drop was a massive 134 points after a