By: Andy_Sutton
A few weeks back I did a special edition of my radio program ‘Beat the Street’ during which I discussed the recent problems in the subprime mortgage markets and the credit arena in general. The broadcast lasted nearly 30 minutes and covered maybe half of what I wanted to talk about, and left unanswered […]

An index measuring U.S. house prices suffered its worst decline since its creation 20 years ago, and there is no sign of a bottom for the market, according to a report compiled by Standard and Poor’s and economist Robert Shiller.
The S&P/Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index fell 3.2 percent to 183.89 last quarter from the […]

By: Paul_Tustain
“…Only a lack of imagination can have allowed professional investors to suddenly think of the US Dollar as today’s quality refuge…”
ONCE EVERYONE gets back from vacation and starts to focus on what’s really going on, we may be in for a torrid few months in the financial markets.
I believe the current lull in […]

It’s bad enough when a company’s outside auditor is a pushover for management. Equally galling would be for the auditor to try telling management how to run the company. Yet that’s what U.S. Senator Charles Schumer has asked the Big Four accounting firms to do at the subprime lenders they audit, pronto.“One of the most […]

S&P Says Housing Prices Fell in 2Q by Steepest Rate Since Its Index Was Started in 1987
U.S. home prices fell 3.2 percent in the second quarter, the steepest rate of decline since Standard & Poor’s began its nationwide housing index in 1987, the research group said TuesdayRead Article [offsite]

By: Captain_Hook
As explained Tuesday , the Fed was not about to give into the mob (in terms of official policy) just yet in consideration of the Presidential Cycle and dollar ($), with the end result being the market thought they were demonstrating the economy is stronger than people think, which turned into a credibility boost […]

By: George_Kleinman
In the financial markets, all we know for sure is that nothing’s for sure.
The way I see it, financially speaking the stock market doesn’t appear to be the place to be right now. Stocks have retreated in recent weeks, but they certainly could go lower, possibly a lot lower. For the foreseeable future, I […]

By: John_Mauldin
Who should we blame for the problems in the credit markets? This week in Outside the Box my good friend Barry Ritholtz takes on the task of pointing his prodigious finger at the guilty parties. As he notes, there is plenty of guilt to go around. This is a problem that is going to […]

By: Ty_Andros
In This Issue – Four Fingers Financial Markets Instability

Banks Out On a Limb
No Escape, aka “Roach Motels”
Juggling Acts
Return of the Resolution Trusts

As we move into September we must keep in mind that historically it is the worst month of the year for the stock markets. Years ending in 7 are […]

By: Gerard_Jackson
The cry is going up from our economic commentariat that the Australian economy is running into “production constraints” and that this in turn will drive up interest rates. It is also argued that this situation is likely to be compounded by the inflationary effects of rising wages. This nonsense, readers, is what passes for […]

By: Stephen_Lendman
These days, financial/market punditry seems to follow two opposite lines of thinking. It ranges from the predominant view that world economies are growing and sound, problems in them minor and fixable, and current volatility (aka turmoil) is corrective, normal and a healthy reassessing and repricing of risk. Contrarians, on the other hand, believe the […]

Martin Weiss writes: This is your final warning.
The tempest Mike Larson and I have been warning you about is here, and the time for protective action is now.
To see the storm, you no longer need the flat-screen window to the world that you get each day from CNBC or CNN. You don’t even require the […]

By: Paul_L_Kasriel
PIMCO’s William Gross is now calling for a fiscal policy bailout for the U.S. housing market debacle rather than a monetary policy bailout (see “Where’s Waldo? Where’s W?”). On the surface, Gross’s arguments seem to make sense – on the surface . Gross argues that even a cut in the federal funds rate of […]

From the looks of things at the newly built Aparta Hotel Residencia, you’d never know that it’s the high summer tourist season in Canet d’En Berenguer, a town of 5,000 just north of Valencia on Spain’s Mediterranean coast.The compound’s 308 apartments, completed this spring, are all unoccupied. Grass has started to sprout between the red […]

By: Damian_Campbell
The Normal Business Cycle
As refined by Martin Pring in his book The All-Season Investor , economic and stock cycles can be broken down into stages. The complete normal business cycle usually lasts approximately 42 - 54 months, but this typical length can be altered by monetary
policy. Business activity goes from the despair of the […]

By: Jim_Willie_CB
The US financial system is experiencing a combination of a heart attack (fibrillation from absent trade recycled surpluses), a massive hairball (subprime debt securities) working through the bank arteries, and a realization (like Wiley Coyote in cartoons) that no terra firma lies beneath the economic feet as the depths below are vividly apparent. Massive […]

Two historically irresistible patterns suggest speculative-bubble housing values will eventually retrace back to their 1995-1997 levels:

the symmetry of speculative rises and retraces
the unbreakable links between income and housing values.
Read Article [offsite]

The Credit Crunch has been hitting the UK Mortgage Sector hard as many easy credit mortgage deals have been removed from the high street shelves in recent weeks. Despite central bank actions to ease financing terms and increase liquidity, this does not address the real issues of illiquid mortgage related bonds and expectations that the […]

Stock and bond markets regained a modicum of stability yesterday, but ongoing gyrations in the commercial-paper market indicate the U.S. subprime crisis is far from over and the risk of further financial-market contagion remains high.
Read Article [offsite]

The recent market meltdown had much less to do with bad subprime loans than advertised. It was caused more fundamentally by excesses at hedge and private equity funds. Those contraptions, invented by the sinfully wealthy barons of Wall Street, have lied to themselves and their investors about the efficacy of their schemes. Now they are […]

By: Paul_L_Kasriel
Richmond Fed President Lacker is the first Fed official to speak publicly about the recent discount rate cut, liquidity issues and the prospects for FOMC federal funds rate policy. I would assume that his comments were cleared by Fed Chairman Bernanke before being delivered to us. Lacker could have saved his breath about discount […]

By: Ned_W_Schmidt
With U.S. mortgage defaults up 90+% from a year ago, collapse of U.S. mortgage market is being felt around the world. U.S. housing starts have fallen to a ten year low, and are headed lower. Financial infrastructure that fueled this speculative bubble is being dismantled. Rate is important, but so is means of funneling […]

By: John_Mauldin
This week’s Outside the Box is from good friend and South African partner Dr. Prieur du Plessis of Plexus Asset Management. Prieur suggests that we should not be surprised at last week’s rate cut, as it is consistent with past rate cut cycles when viewed from the fact that banks are tightening up on […]

By: Ty_Andros
In This Issue – 3 Fingers
1. Water, Water Everywhere, But Not a Drop To Drink!
2. Keys to the House
3. Redemption Day
1. Water, Water Everywhere, But Not a Drop To Drink!
Do not think that because the credit markets are seizing up that there is no money in the financial system, […]

By: Adrian_Ash
“…Monday this week marked the biggest move in Treasury bond yields since Black Monday in Oct. 1987 destroyed more than one-fifth of the US stock market’s value…”
REMEMBER HOW INFLATION was the investment world’s biggest single worry back in…oh…back in June?
Anyone snapping up 10-year US Treasury bonds back then is now looking clever. Very. […]

By: Brady_Willett
Is the proverbial ‘Peak’ in Consumer Borrowing upon us?
With the 1990s stock market mania about to go bust, it was easy to conclude that the U.S. economy would see an entrenched recession. After all, the bubble was arguably larger than any before, and - thanks to easy investing via the internet and the […]

Martin Weiss writes: A massive credit crunch is striking, and you sit at a critical juncture like none other in history.
Never before have you seen so much wealth at stake. Never before have you seen such massive threats to that wealth. And, fortunately, never before have investors had such powerful tools to protect themselves from […]