October 22, 2008
The S&P 500 has predicted nine of the last five recessions, but now that we're undeniably in one, it's worth reminding yourself of the relationship between S&P 500 index moves and the economy itself. The relationship is generally leading, with...
I wrote a guest column this week over at Tina Brown's new The Daily Beast on whether fiscal stimulus is a good idea. Along the way, I noodled numbers about how much stimulus you'd need in the U.S. to make...
If you recall, some time ago I agreed to a just-for-entertainment bet with Arik Hesseldahl at BusinessWeek about Apple's Q4 2008. If the company missed its quarter or guided down, I won, and if it did neither, he won. The...
Folks, an update on the trojan alert I posted here a short while ago. A few people had emailed me that their antivirus apps flagged an International Monetary Fund graphic I had reposted here as possibly contained an image trojan....
It never rains, but it pours. I have had a few people email me saying an International Monetary Fund image in this post was causing their security scanners to warn of a possible Win32 image trojan. I have left the...
My book recommendation du jour is Niall Ferguson's overlooked The Cash Nexus. It is a prodigiously researched and and authoritative look at the relationship between money and power from 1700-2000. Ferguson's book should be required reading for anyone trying...
Some back-door data on the California real estate market via rebuilding statistics from the 2007 wildfires in southern California. A year later, only 150 homes out of the 1,646 burned -– roughly 9% -– have been rebuilt. While it looks...
This came up, indirectly, while I was on CNBC this morning, so here is a table of the top 30 countries worldwide as measured by external debt leverage. In other words, I'm looking at the ratio of total public and...
Nice comments from a pissed Fortis investor excerpted in an internal Moody's email in 2007:...
The actual soon-to-be-infamous "cows" IM exchange from credit rating agency S&P:...
Some useful data from Nielsen about recession-proof and recession-vulnerable consumer categories. Driving that point home, the largest U.S. past maker (I think) is American Italian Pasta Company (OTC:AITP), which is up a spiffy 104% this year. Granted, it's smallish-cap ad...
Riveting brinksmanship going on at 11th hour as Fortress Investment Group works frantically to refinance $1.7-billion in Intrawest debt, which expires tomorrow. Recall that Intrawest, the owner of the Whistler ski resort -- which will host the 2010 Winter...
Nice visualization (via Finviz) of global declines today:...
Some quick links: Barney Frank calling for moratorium on Wall Street bonuses (Bloomberg) CDO cuts show $1-trillion in corporate debt newly toxic (Bloomberg) OPEC risks split on cuts as member-countries reel (Bloomberg) Glory days fade for U.S. farmers (WSJ) Pakistan...
Another excerpt from the credit rating testimony today, this one from a former senior S&P official: This inevitably begs the question: why didn’t management see the need to keep [its ratings] model current [with respect to CDOs/subprime/etc.]? The answer is...
Some quick excerpts from documents obtained by the House Oversight Committee and presented today: In one document, an S&P employee in the structured finance division writes: “It could be structured by cows and we would rate it.” In another,...
