Category: Credit Crisis 2008
The analysis published under this category are as follows.Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Worst of the Credit Crisis Over, Britain Leads the Way / Stock-Markets / Credit Crisis 2008
The credit crisis is global. Interestingly, some of the more creative and straight forward solutions are coming from England. This week in Outside the Box I am presenting you with a very well written (even entertaining) letter from Bedlam Asset Management from London www.bedlamplc.com on their view of the crisis. It is always instructive to look at your problems from the point of view of another party, and even more some when they give you some thoughtful and cogent analysis.Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
International Financial Crisis Economies and Markets Redefining the Rules / Politics / Credit Crisis 2008
A complex sequence of meetings addressing the international financial crisis took place this weekend. The weekend began with meetings among the finance ministers of the G-7 leading industrialized nations. It was followed by a meeting of finance ministers from the G-20, the group of industrial and emerging powers that together constitute 90 percent of the world's economy. There were also meetings with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank. The meetings concluded on Sunday with a summit of the eurozone, those European Union countries that use the euro as their currency. Along with these meetings, there were endless bilateral meetings far too numerous to catalog.Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, October 13, 2008
How Credit Crises Begin and End / Interest-Rates / Credit Crisis 2008
From the standpoint of investor sentiment the credit crisis has reached the point of maximum saturation. Every TV news program and political commentator, every newspaper and every magazine in town is writing about it. It is being depicted as a virtual apocalypse that can't be stopped. For example, the headline for the latest cover of Time magazine reads: "The New Hard Times.” It features a photograph of a soup line from the Great Depression.Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, October 13, 2008
Rising Bond Yields Despite Interest Rate Cuts / Interest-Rates / Credit Crisis 2008
The bond market traded sharply lower last week despite the ever intensifying turmoil in world financial markets. The Treasury decided to auction a special $40 Billion 10 year Notes to ease the demand for Treasury paper in the bond market. So all of the sudden it appears that in spite of the safe haven qualities of US Treasury Bonds and Bills, the market has realized that with all the government bailouts and guarantees, there will be no shortage of government bonds going forward.Read full article... Read full article...
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Banks to Avoid as Iceland Goes Bankrupt with £10 billion of UK Deposits / Economics / Credit Crisis 2008
Relations between Britain and the small north atlantic government of Iceland hit a new deep freeze following Britain's implementation of Anti-terror laws to seize the assets of Icelandic financial institutions in Britain following the Icelandic Government's statements that they would not live up to their obligations in recompensing UK depositors.Read full article... Read full article...
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Credit Crisis Collapse What Happens Next? / Stock-Markets / Credit Crisis 2008
- Construction Lending: The Next Shoe to Drop
- Lehman at the Center
- Iceland Guarantees What?
- Letters of Credit: Going, Going Gone?
- What to Do and Where Do We Go from Here?
I have been writing for almost a year that the next shoe to drop on US banks would be commercial construction lending. Today we look at some hard numbers. We look across the pond to sort out the problems in Europe. We look at the consequences of the losses stemming from Lehman. Then we look at one of the more serious consequences of the banking crisis, one that will bring the crisis home to you. Finally, we look at what the various governments of the world must do in response. It may not be fun, but it should be interesting. And it is important. Feel free to forward this letter to anyone who asks why we not only need the bailout but will need even more coordinated government action.
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Saturday, October 11, 2008
G7 Talks About Halting Ongoing Financial Crash / Politics / Credit Crisis 2008
Bloomberg is reporting G-7 Commit to `All Necessary Steps' to Stem Crisis .
Group of Seven finance chiefs, meeting after global stocks plunged the most since 1970, pledged to prevent the failure of key banks while stopping short of fresh initiatives to thaw credit markets.
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Thursday, October 09, 2008
Dollar Libor Jumps to New Credit Crisis Extreme / Interest-Rates / Credit Crisis 2008
Lending remains in a deep freeze as the Libor Dollar Rate Jumps to Highest in Year .
The cost of borrowing in dollars for three months in London soared to the highest level this year as coordinated interest-rate reductions worldwide failed to revive lending among banks for any longer than a day.
Thursday, October 09, 2008
Credit Crisis Commercial Paper Disaster / Interest-Rates / Credit Crisis 2008
Shah Gilani writes: The commercial paper market is the thoroughfare where Wall Street merges into Main Street. Corporations, finance companies and banks rely on Main Street investors for the cash they deposit into money-market funds and other short-term investment vehicles. Ultimately, that cash buys the commercial paper that's issued to help fund everything from corporate payrolls to a manufacturing company's production inventories.Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, October 09, 2008
European Government's Panic Triggers Stock Market Crash / Stock-Markets / Credit Crisis 2008
October 6th , 2008 Issue #32 Vol. 2Black Monday ended with European stock markets down by between 7% and 9%, wiping out more than $2 trillion from global market capitalisation as markets collapsed in response to the disunified panic moves by individual european governments to guarantee all deposits at 100% which is contrary to the outcome of the weekend crisis meeting of European leaders that's only significant result was for a £12billion package of loans for small businesses.
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Wednesday, October 08, 2008
Credit Default Swaps Weapons of Financial Mass Destruction / Interest-Rates / Credit Crisis 2008
The latest downward spiral in the global commodity and stock markets, coinciding with several high profile bank failures, is conjuring up fears of the calamities of the Great Depression of the 1930's. European and Asian stock markets are plunging as terror and panic hits Wall Street. The US Congress finally passed a massive $700 billion rescue package to unclog the credit markets, yet US stock markets have continued to plummet, shedding $1.5-trillion in value last week.Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, October 07, 2008
Global Financial Crisis Safe Havens / Currencies / Credit Crisis 2008
We have been warning for some time that “there is no such thing as a safe asset anymore, you have to take a diversified approach to something as mundane as cash.” Unfortunately, the current crisis shows that we may be right. Physical gold is attractive to many investors because of its lack of counter party risk. The only counter party risk with gold held in your personal vault is that someone may break in and steal it. However, even staunch gold bugs rarely hold all their net worth in gold, but diversify if for no other reason that it is impractical to have essentially all your net worth in gold. And while gold is currently fulfilling its role as sound money, it often trades in tandem with other commodities; this can result in stomach-twisting volatility. As a result, many hold gold as insurance, but few truly live on their personal gold standard.Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, October 07, 2008
LIBOR OIS Spread Signals Credit Crisis Earthquake / Interest-Rates / Credit Crisis 2008
Keith Fitz-Gerald writes: More than a year ago, even before the subprime-mortgage crisis had revved itself up into the full-fledged credit crisis that's now threatening global growth, we pointed to the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) and other interbank rates that suggested that the worst was yet to come.Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, October 07, 2008
IceSave Bank Stops UK Customers Withdrawing Funds / Personal_Finance / Credit Crisis 2008
IceSave the UK arm of Icelandic bank Landsbanki has issued the statement on their website that they are currently suspending their UK banking operations which means UK customers CANNOT make withdrawals of some £4 billion saved with Icesave.Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, October 06, 2008
Countries Can Go Bankrupt Too! / News_Letter / Credit Crisis 2008
October 2nd , 2008 Issue #30 Vol. 2Dear Reader,
Gordon Brown confirms that to all intents and purposes all UK savings are guaranteed to £50,000 per depositor per financial group. This is a reaction to the the Irish governments decision to guarantee all depositor savings at 100% for 2 years which has ignited a flood of scared monies seeking refuge within Irish banks that have operations within the UK. This has resulted in increasing calls from media commentators and politicians for the UK government to follow suit with a similar 100% blanket guarantee.
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Monday, October 06, 2008
Bradford & Bingley- UK Mortgage Bank to be Nationalised / News_Letter / Credit Crisis 2008
September 27th , 2008 Issue #29 Vol. 2Dear Reader,
Bradford and Bingley's slow 12 month death march towards the same fate as Northern Rock finally looks set to have come to an end with expectations on Sunday that the beleaguered bank will be nationalised with a view to a break of the bank and liquidation of assets so as to cover in part the estimated £20 billion bailout cost that is required to fill the gap between assets and liabilities. The toxic mortgages will probably end up with the government owned Northern Rock bank which will increasingly be seen as the UK Governments Toxic Mortgage Dump where the tulip backed securities of further bank busts and partial bailouts will end up.
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Monday, October 06, 2008
Iceland Going Bankrupt? / Economics / Credit Crisis 2008
The focus of the financial storm now shifts to the small North Atlantic Island state of Iceland, a country with barely 330,000 inhabitants that saw its banks in recent years expand across Europe as they played and rolled the dice in the global derivatives market, financed on leverage from financial institutions across the globe that were eager to lend on the back of cheap low interest rate carry trade financing which delivered profits for nothing i.e. the difference between the rate borrowed and charged on the interbank market for a near limitless exponentially rising over the counter derivatives bubble that passed $500 trillions, that's trillions NOT billions!Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, October 06, 2008
Financial Crisis Turning into a Real Economic Crisis / Economics / Credit Crisis 2008
Mike Larson writes: Everyone has been acutely focused on Washington — specifically, if and how the financial industry will get bailed out. The Senate voted to approve a revised $700-billion bailout package, one that's packed with all kinds of fresh pork and new tax cuts. And it looks like the House may finally get on board, too.
But the real fireworks aren't in D.C. — they're in the REAL economy. It's looking like a total disaster in the making. Just consider what we learned this week:
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Monday, October 06, 2008
Credit Crisis Worse to Come as U.S. Mortgage Resets Continue / Housing-Market / Credit Crisis 2008
We are often told through the mainstream media that “the worst is behind us now” with respect to the credit crisis and that much of the blame for the crisis in the first place can be attributed to defaults on sub-prime mortgages, a meltdown in housing-related credit instruments, and plummeting housing values in many local markets across the USA.Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, October 06, 2008
Euro and British Pound Come Crashing Down to Earth / Currencies / Credit Crisis 2008
Jack Crooks writes: Don't look now, but the Eurozone and England are in big trouble.
Actually, you do need to look now because there's no point in turning your head away from what's driving global financial markets and more importantly ... currencies.
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