Archive for June 12th, 2009

Subprime Doesn’t Get Much Worse Than This

This will help you get your weekend off to a good start. HousingWire reports that Fitch has come out with some more massive downgrades of subprime RMBS. That’s not too shocking but the numbers behind them are. Here is what HW reports: Fitch Ratings today made massive downgrades on various vintage ‘05 through ‘08 subprime residential […]

George Soros Holds Forth On Derivatives And Regulation

George Soros weighed in on derivatives and financial system regulation during a trip to China. He didn’t pull any punches on either subject. He has scant use for derivatives in general and believes credit default swaps are “instruments of destruction” that need to be outlawed. From Reuters: He said one financial institution that discovered to […]

The Kiss Of Death

I subscribe to the theory that the thickness of the ice upon which embattled CEO’s stand is inversely proportional to the amount of praise that the board of directors heaps on them. If that theory is correct, then Ken Lewis is a goner. From the WSJ Deal Journal: The day before Lewis headed to Capitol […]

Some Charts To Ponder

If you like to stare at charts and divine meaning (I freely confess to doing so) then you might enjoy having a crack at these two. They’re making the rounds of the blogs today. I’ll put them up for you and then cite a couple of reactions from others as well as offer mine and […]

Blackrock + Barclays: Too Big?

I will confess to being no expert when it comes to the asset management business. Still the sheer size of the Blackrock acquisition of Barclays Global Investors takes me aback. For those not familiar already with the transaction, here is a recap from the WSJ: BlackRock Inc. reached an agreement to buy Barclays Global Investors […]

Doubts On China’s Trade Numbers

This is a follow-up to a brief post that I put up yesterday regarding China’s May export and import data. I pretty much just reported the data, one of the key components being that exports were down 26.4% year-over-year and imports shrank 25.2% for the same period. A couple bloggers picked up on a point […]