Archive for November, 2009

Credit Market Overview
November 30, 2009
Black Friday got a little darker for Dubai as the nation requested a six-month standstill agreement on its debt.  A year ago, when the world was not only staring into the abyss but appeared to have slipped off the edge and was falling into it, Nouriel Roubini was predicting all sorts… »

Credit Market Overview
November 27, 2009
Today is “Black Friday”.  In an economy where 70% of GDP is a result of consumer spending do you not think the people that name these things could have come up with a little better moniker?  Why black?  Black because this is the part of the year where retailers finally begin… »

Credit Market Overview
November 25, 2009
To say that the world is a different place than it was yesterday is a bit cliché; to say it is a different place than it was on Thanksgiving Day 2007 is the grossest of understatements.
Having hopefully been through the worst of the back side of the most recent bubble and… »

Credit Market Overview
November 24, 2009
Whether we are currently in the eye of an economic storm the back wall of which is still lurking with prime residential and commercial mortgage defaults providing the knockout blow to an already weakened financial defense network, or as some say, the green shoots are turning into saplings, stocks have made… »

Credit Market Overview
November 23, 2009
This past weekend I went to see the film titled “The Sun”.  It depicts the final days of Hirohito’s reign as Emperor Showa of Japan at the end of WWII.  During one scene the still Emperor and Gen. Mac Arthur are dining in the palace and the general asks Hirohito why… »

Credit Market Overview
November 20, 2009
There is a scene in the movie “Animal House” (which completely rips off Dr. Suess’ “Horton Hears a Who” in one fell swoop but that’s a story for a different day) where a small group is at Professor Riegert’s house and after the room fills with a certain scent the discussion… »

Credit Market Overview
November 19, 2009
With its current CEO having pulled a lever for John McCain, its previous CEO, who hand picked the current one, having a long history of riding the elephant on election day and the head of its government-relations office having worked for one Ronnie and two Georges; Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of General… »

Credit Market Overview
November 18, 2009
“Grave Dancer” sounds like something that would be air-brushed onto the tank of a ’54 Pan-head chopper or maybe even tattooed on the arm of the guy riding it, or maybe engraved on the handle of some famous outlaw’s pistol.  The point is the term seems to conjure mythic proportions to… »

Credit Market Overview
November 17, 2009
With much, if not all, of responsibility for pulling the U.S and the world out of its slump sitting squarely on the shoulders of the venerable American consumer yesterday’s news of Advance Retail Sales beating expectations by 0.5% rang the right bells for investors as we head into the all important… »

Credit Market Overview
November 16, 2009
Allowing U.S. banks to keep bad assets on their books has resulted in a continued unwillingness to lend and generated a host of comparisons to Japan’s economy in the 90’s which has been dubbed “The Lost Decade”.
The question now is not whether it was a lost decade but whether that decade… »