January 16, 2009
For a while I have been saying that “Debt is the new equity” -- and I keep seeing others saying the same thing. It’s not just that debt will likely outperform equity over the next months/years, but that debt is...
This amusing Wall Street story comes via Satyajit Das: The best investment story of 2008 relates to a banker who had a modest shareholding in his employer – a storied investment bank. Upon being transferred to London, he sold the...
This Monday at 9am PST Felix Salmon of Portfolio and I are going to have a live chat here about sovereign defaults and the credit markets. Folks will be able to participate, and we can all tear into what’s happening....
Some musings from me on the U.S. savings tsunami, and its consequences and implications. Check here....
A fairly remarkable sea-change in Fitch Ratings' view of rated companies/countries/sectors over the last two years. The stresses in Europe, in particular, caught my eye....
A colleague of mine sent me this recent notice from financial data provider Compustat with respect to Zimbabwe: Announcement - Zimbabwean Dollar Exchange Rates Compustat will be removing the currency exchange rates for the Zimbabwean dollar beginning with the rate...
This figure from the National Restaurant Association is a useful reminder of the massive change in the last fifty years in the U.S. in terms of the proportion of food dollars going to restaurants. Anyone want to take the "over"...
China headed for hard landing (Bloomberg) U.S. gives Bank of America a $138-billion lifeline (Bloomberg) AQR Takes a Leap Into Mutual Funds (WSJ) Did Economics Cause World War Ii? (SSRN/Gordon) Global recession and the U.S. downturn (Morgan Stanley) Caisse...
My friend Alex over at Marginal Revolution has (appropriately, to my mind) done an about-face on Minneapolis Fed graphs that he posted there earlier in the week. The graphs compared employment losses in the current recession/depression to employment losses in...
My colleague Harold Bradley at Kauffman and I have been bouncing back and forth perspectives about the path forward from here. Near-term, I would characterize Harold -- and he can correct me -- as considerably more bullish than I am....
