Category: Credit Crisis 2008
The analysis published under this category are as follows.Monday, June 16, 2008
Credit Crisis Not Over, as Banks Hoard Cash / Interest-Rates / Credit Crisis 2008
In contrast to Bernanke's foolish comment "risk of substantial downturn has faded" (see Things That Have Not Yet Happened ) the Bank of England sees things differently.Read full article... Read full article...
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Credit Crisis Crushing UK Banks / Interest-Rates / Credit Crisis 2008
Many commentators in the mainstream have in recent weeks begun voicing the opinion that the credit crisis may be over or the worst of the crisis is behind us -
Jim Reid, a credit strategist at Deutsche Bank, said: "This is a further sign that the actual credit crisis is easing. Anything that is not complete seizure is encouraging." on news of the HBOS £500 mortgage securitisation deal.
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Thursday, June 12, 2008
Standard & Poor's Cuts Ratings on 65 classes of Alt-A Securities / Interest-Rates / Credit Crisis 2008
In a completely expected move (at least in this corner) is yet another S&P downgrade in Alt-A mortgage backed securities .June 11, 2008-Standard & Poor's Ratings Services today lowered its ratings on 65 classes from 19 residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) transactions backed by U.S. Alternative-A (Alt-A) mortgage loan collateral issued in 2006.
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Thursday, June 12, 2008
LIBOR Leading Indicator for End of the Credit Crisis and Banking Fiasco / Interest-Rates / Credit Crisis 2008
How will we know the credit crisis and banking fiasco are truly over?
We won't.
But there's a damn good indicator that will show us the way - the London Interbank Offer Rate , usually referred to as LIBOR.
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Thursday, June 12, 2008
Bernanke Declares Worst of Credit Crisis is Over Before Tsunami Wave Hits / Interest-Rates / Credit Crisis 2008
I have been staring in amusement at Bernanke's latest proclamation: Danger of downturn appears to have faded .Despite a recent spike in the nation's unemployment rate, the danger that the economy has fallen into a "substantial downturn" appears to have waned, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Monday.
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Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Mal Investments and Money Printing Equals Explosive Unpayable G7 Debt Mountains / Stock-Markets / Credit Crisis 2008
The Crack up Boom series has returned due to the enormous amounts of money and credit creation required to save the G7 financial and banking systems. As I have outlined in recent letters, we are only in the second inning of a nine-inning ball game. Over 500 billion dollars will have been created out of “thin air” and it will require over a trillion to rescue the reckless bankers from their journey into the world of speculation and hedge funds in disguise. Their efforts have failed miserably and now they are paying the price of misuse of leverage. This leverage has just continued to get worse, contrary to reports about de-leveraging. Assets which used to be able to be priced as recently as last fall have now moved into the roach motels (see Tedbits Archives for August '07 at www.TraderView.com ) known as Level III assets, AKA asset value UNKNOWN.Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Lehman Brothers- Next to Follow Bear Stearns Into Credit Crisis Oblivion? / Companies / Credit Crisis 2008
Lehman's has made some extremely large property bets right at the tip of the commercial real estate bubble. Those bets are now going sour. Let's pick up the story from the WSJ article Lehman's Property Bets Are Coming Back to Bite .Read full article... Read full article...
Sunday, June 08, 2008
Multifaceted Credit Crises Hitting the Financial Markets- Part 2 / Stock-Markets / Credit Crisis 2008
Click here for Part 2 BCA Research: US Inflation – diverging from expectations
“US core consumer inflation, as measured by the PCE price index, remains near 2%. In contrast, consumer inflation expectations continue to soar, courtesy of gasoline and food prices.
“US inflation worries have intensified, as the surge in highly visible gasoline and food prices continues. Government data are not trusted because they show that core consumer price inflation has failed to rise. The build up of pipeline price pressures from rising input costs is a long-term concern, but higher core consumer inflation will only become a threat after the economy gains significant momentum, i.e. not a danger for 2008.
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Sunday, June 08, 2008
Multifaceted Credit Crises Hitting the Financial Markets- Part 1 / Stock-Markets / Credit Crisis 2008
After stock markets have held up bravely in the face of the credit crises and mounting economic woes, a combination of renewed concerns about the financial sector, a record-breaking spurt in the oil price, and a rotten unemployment number claimed their toll on Friday, triggering a sharp sell-off in most parts of the world.
“Today was a bona fide panic day. They threw ‘em in,” said Richard Russell, author of the Dow Theory Letters for the past 50 years. The bears were out in force, as personified by Bill King ( The King Report ): “The technicals, seasonals, fundamentals and financial system conditions are negative. And now the Fed is suggesting that it will no longer cut rates. Rallies should be viewed as a gift from the trading gods.”
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Sunday, June 08, 2008
Bernanke Cries "It's all China's Fault!" / Economics / Credit Crisis 2008
He's at it again. Bernanke, that is. Thursday the Fed chief delivered a rambling 45 minute speech at the International Monetary Conference in Barcelona, Spain laying out all the reasons why the Federal Reserve is NOT responsible for the present crisis in the financial markets. Here's what he said:Read full article... Read full article...
Saturday, June 07, 2008
Colliding Bubbles, US Unemployment, the Credit Crisis and Oil Price Surge / Stock-Markets / Credit Crisis 2008
- Unemployment Jumps to 5.5%, On Its Way to 6%
- What the Tax Numbers Show
- What's Up With Oil?
- When Bubbles Collide
- America on a Diet
I remember in the summer of 2006 I would face my blank computer screen on a Friday and wonder, what I could write about? The media was all Goldilocks, all the time. Today, there is such a target-rich environment. I could probably write three letters a week, there is so much happening that is worthy of our attention. The problem today is trying to decide what not to write about, which means I get emails from readers wondering why I don't mention their areas of particular interest. But at eight pages, I just have to stop. You need a break!
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Saturday, June 07, 2008
Next Phase of the Credit Crisis to Hit Credit Default Swaps $62 Trillion Market / Interest-Rates / Credit Crisis 2008
While attention has been focused on the relatively tiny US „sub-prime“ home mortgage default crisis as the center of the current financial and credit crisis impacting the Anglo-Saxon banking world, a far larger problem is now coming into focus. Sub-prime or high-risk Collateralized Mortgage Obligations, CMOs as they are called, are only the tip of a colossal iceberg of dodgy credits which are beginning to go sour. The next crisis is already beginning in the $62 TRILLION market for Credit Default Swaps. You never heard of them? It's time to take a look, then.Read full article... Read full article...
Saturday, June 07, 2008
Protecting the Markets From Itself- Blind Faith & Liberty / Stock-Markets / Credit Crisis 2008
"The moment we face it frankly we are driven to the conclusion that the community has a right to put a price on the right to live in it..."- George Bernard Shaw, Prefaces (1934)
INVESTMENT BANKERS have a lot to answer in summer 2008. Not least letting idiot ideas about government, markets and your liberty run amok during this, a US election year.
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Friday, June 06, 2008
Downgrades of Monoline Bond Insurers AMBAC and MBIA- The Story No One is Talking About / Interest-Rates / Credit Crisis 2008
Shortly after a 200+ point rally yesterday in the Dow Jones Industrial Average we had some big news. REALLY big news. Had this happened a few months ago when everyone was talking about the mere possibility, we'd likely have seen a 4 digit Dow because of it. It is likely that by the time this article reaches inboxes, websites, and blogs around the globe the story will have broken. However, as of market open, Financial Times is the only major site I've found carrying a headline. There are bits and pieces elsewhere, but they are largely buried in small backpage articles. I was lucky enough to see the blurb in the company news of AMBAC only because the stock is on one of my watch lists.Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, June 06, 2008
Credit Crisis Pressure Points Building as Major Banks Heading for Bankruptcy / Stock-Markets / Credit Crisis 2008
Standard & Poor announced in late May it has cut or might cut debt ratings on $34 billion of securities tied to Alt-A mortgages, whose type issued in 2007 have a default rate to 6.64% for 90 days late as of end April. Massive S&P downgrades might soon force Wall Street firms to move up to $5000 billion of assets from off-balance sheet locations back onto their books. The bank sector has so far seen very little in bank failures, compared to past cycles.
The Texas Ratio is calculated by dividing non-performing loans at a bank, including those 90 days delinquent, by their tangible equity capital plus money set aside for future loan losses. Using this ratio, IndyMac Bancorp, Sterling Financial, Corus Bankshares, Imperial Capital Bancorp, and GMAC Bank are all on the verge of busts. Look for these banks to possibly lead the list of failures, each with unique vulnerabilities.
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Thursday, June 05, 2008
Fed Governors Openly Question Ben Bernanke's Competence / Interest-Rates / Credit Crisis 2008
Open dissent at the Fed continues. I first talked about this a week ago in Infighting At The Fed . Today Lacker Says Fed Loans to Wall Street Risk More Crises . Richmond Federal Reserve Bank President Jeffrey Lacker said the lending to securities firms that the central bank introduced in March may lay the seeds of further financial crises.Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, June 05, 2008
Home Equity Loan Valuations In Stratosphere / Housing-Market / Credit Crisis 2008
Minyan Peter had some interesting comments yesterday about home equity loans. I happen to have some charts to put his comments in perspective.First let's hear from Minyan Peter . Lower Home Prices Impact Loan Portfolios
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Monday, June 02, 2008
The Next Shoe To Drop for the Financials / Stock-Markets / Credit Crisis 2008
The next shoe to drop for the financials, and the larger credit crisis, will be the market's acceptance that mortgage related write-downs are nowhere near complete or close to where they are going, where presently in extreme bubble locales like California , much of the market has been halved, at a minimum. Of course this condition is not isolated to just California , and the real estate market. Soon, bond ensures, Ambac the poster child in this regard, will need to come clean with respect to what condition our condition really is, and ‘phase II' of the credit crisis will swing into gear. And based on the technical condition of Ambac shares , this shouldn't take long at all.
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Friday, May 30, 2008
Credit Crisis Vs Savings and Loans Crisis / Stock-Markets / Credit Crisis 2008
I have been talking about an expected wave of bank failures for quite some time, most recently in Too Late To Stop Bank Failures . Recently I was asked to compare the current crisis to the 1980's S&L Crisis in regards to to whether or not this crisis will be worse.By sheer number of failures the S&L crisis will dwarf what's coming hands down. Here is a chart from MarketWatch that tells the story.
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Thursday, May 29, 2008
Latest Banking-Sector Credit Crisis Are Bank Owned Life Insurance Vehicles / Economics / Credit Crisis 2008
Three major U.S. banks - including Fifth Third Bancorp. ( FITB ) and Wachovia Corp. ( WB ) - got clobbered in recent days on the news that they've lost another $1.6 billion by making investments in the Citigroup Inc. ( C ) Falcon hedge fund that lost 75% of its value earlier this year.
It's just the latest chapter in a continuing credit-crisis saga that's gone on for so long that many investors have become numb to the news: They regard all new developments with a kind of "so what" attitude, or just ignore the news completely.
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