Business Cycle & Economics Blog of Caleb Lawrence
The picture McKinsey paints is one of concentrated (albeit large) credit excesses rather than economy-wide debt binges. As a result, the debt-reduction process will differ by sector and by country. Judged by ratios of total debt to GDP, deleveraging has barely started. As of June 2009 these ratios had fallen only in America, Britain and [...]
A great interview with Economist Joseph Stiglitz on the banking crises. Currently the top four banks control 40 percent of American deposits. Isn’t this concentration in our banking system terribly dangerous for our economy? And do you get the sense that the Obama administration thinks it’s dangerous, or plans to do anything about it? It [...]
Very interesting interview with Hayman Capital Founder Kyle Bass. Bass testified at the crisis hearings in Washington, about Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, bank capital, bank leverage and derivatives. He discussed those issues with CNBC’s David Faber along with his forecast for Japan which begins at about the 4 minute mark Source: CNBC
Stocks fell hard in early trade, erasing yesterday’s gains on little significant news. The Producer Price Index increased .2% in December and came in 4.7% higher than a year ago on a huge surge in crude goods, largely energy, prices as the year came to a close. Housing starts fell 4% to an annualized rate [...]
Very interesting video clip on some research done by Amherst Securities illustrating the foreclosure crises. Source: Bloomberg Laurie Goodman, Amherst Securities
Stocks moved steadily higher from the open on mixed data. The November Treasury International Capital flows or TIC report jumped to 126.8 billion as risk adverse foreign investors bought 118.3 billion in various Treasury issues, about 3 times October’s figure. Agency issues, Fannie Freddie etc, were positive at 5.9 billion while equities slipped to 9.7 [...]
Stocks look to finish the week in the red as the DOW has lost about 30 points or 1/3% since Monday while the NASDAQ is down almost 40 points or a little less than 2%. The latest numbers on the HAMP program show 66,645 permanent modifications or 7.4% of the 902,620 trial modifications. An improvement [...]
Stocks managed modest gains into the final hour. The Fed’s Unified Budget Deficit for December was 92 billion and for the first 3-months of fiscal 2010 is 17% higher than last year. Expectations are that the deficit will decrease overall this year compared to last but will see. In economic news the Fed’s Beige Book [...]
Stocks managed modest gains into the final hour despite a rough start on little real news. The latest MBA activity index jumped 14.3% in the latest week to 528.1, purchase apps gained .8% while refi’s surged 21.8% as the 30-year contract rate fell to 5.13%. That said the composite index remains 20% lower than a [...]
FRBSF ECONOMIC LETTER 2010-01 January 11, 2010 BY REUVEN GLICK AND KEVIN J. LANSING A great piece on the housing bubble and I encourage you to read the whole thing. 5 pages, it can be found here: Global Household Leverage, House Prices and Consumption Household leverage in the United States and many industrial countries increased [...]
Hi and welcome to The Profit Motive, I’m your host Caleb Lawrence. Once upon a time in America the media acted as the watchdog of the corporations and the state. In the modern era it’s all about ratings and profits, opinion has been substituted for news and frequently is presented as fact. Much like my daily radio show on KPIG 107.5 FM in Santa Cruz California and KPYG FM 94.9 Cayucos/San Luis Obispo California. A thousand Blogs were able to spot the current problems and many began discussing it years before it reached crises proportions. While there were exceptions, and these exceptions are becoming more common, the mainstream media failed to get it and largely continue to do so.
