What are the banks going to do next. Only a brave or foolhardy man would try to guess. I am not brave. The big banks are facing potentially crippling loses on Second Lien and Heloc loans as well as on Option ARM’s, each of which would be enough to bankrupt them. Taken together, not one …
The stock market has risen 3000 points on the DOW and 2000 on the FTSE. So why don’t I believe the experts when they say the recession is over and the recovery has started? One simple phrase will suffice – “Time is money”. When you’re making money time is on your side. The more time …
I think the mistake everyone is making is to assume that because China is a ‘communist dictatorship’ this means the party must be in control. I think this is a dangerous assumption. Just look at bank lending. Last year the government wanted a stimulus. So the government told banks to lend. They did. In the …
If the Greek government manages to sell it’s long awaited bond offering of 3-5 Billion Euros of 10 year debt there will be a sigh of relief. Crisis averted will be the cry. And of course it will be. For to have a no-bid would certainly force the crisis. Germany would be under intense pressure …
Do you remember an old music hall act where an entertainer spins a plate on the top of a tall, flexible pole, waggling the pole until the plate is spinning so fast it stays balanced? The act was to see how many plates he could keep spinning. The longer it went on the more hectic …
Act one of this crisis was purely financial. As act two has progressed it has become political. Soon now, if we want to keep our sanity and our dignity as ordinary, but free people, it must become personal. This crisis must become a crisis of our deepest beliefs and values – our sense of who …
A report originally in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung ( very respectable german paper) a few days ago, said that insolvent Greek banks may themselves have insured Greek debt but AIG might also have written CDS’s on Greek debt. If the first is true then we have the insolvent insuring themselves. That certainly has the ring of financial truth …
Now robbery is a strong term. If I was anyone important and I had used the term ‘robbery’ instead of ‘affair’ then I might be hearing from Goldman’s lawyers. Luckily I didn’t and I’m not anyone important. But here is why I might have considered using the word robbery – as in ‘daylight’. Goldman – …
Duabi built its future on sand. Recently that was found not to be such a smart move. UAE got stung and will get stung some more to bail things out. But the rest of the Oil states are not looking too happy either. Now this is a relative thing of course. Oil will assure none …
So what IS going to happen to Greece? Its a $254B dollar question, that only Angela Merkle can answer and even she can’t say for sure. Here’s some of what we do know. Of their $254B debt $64B has to be financed this year alone. Of that 30B has to be sold by March-April. To …
