Pimco.com – Bill Gross: School Daze, School Daze Good Old Golden Rule Days There’s plenty of blame to go around. Solutions from policymakers on the right or left, however, seem focused almost exclusively on rectifying or reducing our budget deficit as a panacea. While Democrats favor tax increases and mild adjustments to entitlements, Republicans pound… Continue reading Bill Gross Speaks
The Wall Street Journal – Bank Fine Hints at Feds’ Playbook In a lawsuit Tuesday, the Securities and Exchange Commission said investors in the 2007 deal, called Squared CDO 2007-1, lost nearly everything when the housing bubble burst. The damage spread from General Motors Co. pension plans to several banks in Asia. But the hedge… Continue reading Regulation
The New York Times – Bloomberg TV Pushes for a Wider Audience BLOOMBERG has begun a major marketing effort for its television operation in a bid to persuade business executives to see the company as more than just a maker of the terminals that are popular on trading floors. We want to be the most… Continue reading Bloomberg TV Takes On CNBC
The Financial Times – Trades reveal China shift from dollar China began diversifying away from the US dollar in earnest in the first four months of this year, most likely by buying far more European government debt than US dollar assets, according to estimates from Standard Chartered Bank. China’s foreign exchange reserves expanded by around… Continue reading China’s Dollar Dependency
<Click on chart for larger image> The Wall Street Journal – Greece’s Bailout Brinkmanship No Greek political party or public-sector union has any incentive to agree to the terms of any European Union and International Monetary Fund rescue package because they believe the terms can be improved as long as they keep protesting. The key… Continue reading Greece
The Wall Street Journal – Housing Troubles Have Deep Foundations Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke may be right that recent rises in food and energy prices are transitory. If only the same were true of weakness in the housing market…To be sure, existing-home sales appear to be starting to stabilize around the five-million mark. If… Continue reading Housing Supply
MarketBeat (WSJ Blog) – Inflation: What’s the Worry? Barclays Capital and UBS have separate notes out today noting the recent rise in core inflation pressures, driven mainly by higher rent prices. They suggest this recent increase in the core will push the Fed to act sooner than the market expects to tighten policy. Here’s Barclays,… Continue reading Inflation & Rent
<Click on chart for larger image> Zero Hedge (Blog) – S&P Profit Margins Have Now Peaked Well, technically they peaked some time ago (contrary to mainstream media propaganda), but we were waiting for another quarter to confirm our findings. For the sake of recreating our results, courtesy of CapitalIQ, we ran an analysis for all… Continue reading S&P Profit Margins
The Wall Street Journal – Feds Sue Bankers Over Fall in Bonds Federal regulators accused J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC of duping five large credit unions into buying more than $3 billion in mortgage bonds that were “destined to perform poorly,” and that quickly sank the credit unions.… Continue reading Small Banks Strike Back At Big Banks
The Wall Street Journal – Lending Battle Is Risky Business Banks and other lenders are engaged in an increasingly pitched fight for some corporate borrowers, raising concerns among analysts and regulators that the banks aren’t charging enough to cover the risk they are taking on. The battle to make loans, in contrast to the credit… Continue reading Bank Lending
The Financial Times – Political union cannot fix the euro Those who argue that “political union” is the solution to the current crisis seem to believe that Europe’s problem is institutional. Unlike the US, the eurozone does not have the political institutions to back up a common currency. But if Europe was just equipped with… Continue reading Would A Central Financial Body Fix Eurozone Problems?