Ya gotta wonder about headlines like these, U.S. distressed debt best performer in 2009: report
U.S. distressed debt, among the hardest hit asset classes last year, has become the best, with returns of 39.5 percent year to date as risk appetite improves, Bank of America Merrill Lynch said.
For the month of May, distressed debt was second only to emerging market equities after returning 25.4 percent, Bank of America Merrill said in a research note late on Monday.
Should we believe BoA, who probably has a vested interest in selling off toxic assets?
Here I was, with a nice polite post set to print, when I read the related links to this article at Naked Capitalism. And what do they all say? "Oil is surging because the dollar is tanking."
So excuse me, but I have to toss the politeness out the window and shout, "IT'S NOT THE DOLLAR, STUPID!!!" Here's a graph from Worthwhile Canadian Initiative including a variety of currencies, just against Oil:
OK, smartypants, if it's all about the dollar, then why is the price of Oil surging in EVERY CURRENCY??? And don't give me that "Peak Oil" cr**....
JB Slear, a gold and silver broker based in Arizona specialises in helping high net worth clients take physical delivery of gold and silver futures contracts. He said "we're finding more restrictions being applied to overseas buyers, one Comex warehouse will not allow overseas deliveries."
Slear tells his clients that they may have to wait more than two weeks to take delivery as delays and complications in the process have become increasingly commonplace. In some cases this has fueled concern that stockpiles are running out.
So far, the Obama administration approach to bailouts has been to keep running Bush Economic term III. They have been far too kind (genteel even) showering taxpayer monies on the incompetents and fools who drove their firms over the abyss. Indeed, it's all but impossible to see where the largesse of the Bush bailout policies ends and the Obama bailout policies begins.
If today were November 2012, I would not vote for this team. As far as the banking sector is concerned, this gang is no different than the knaves and dolts who came before. It is more of the same irresponsible, expensive and reckless policy that preceded them.
They say that laughter is the universal language. Treasury Secretary Geithner learned this today in China.
Mr Geithner, in China on his first visit as US Treasury Secretary, sought to allay concerns that Washington’s growing budget deficit would fan inflation which, in turn, would undermine the dollar and US bonds.
So much has been made of the subprime mortgage meltdown that you would think it was almost totally responsible for the economic collapse, and that once the subprime problem was fixed then the worst would be over.
Unfortunately nothing could be further from the truth, despite hitting new highs in foreclosure listing. Instead it was the first round of a three part collapse, and we are on the edge of the second round.
I will demonstrate with a fantastic series of charts below, most of them were created by the T2 Partners.
Stirling Newberry argues that the failure to achieve real reform of the financial system means we are in the same place we were just before the 2007-07 crisis: central banks’ “easy money” policies, coupled with a paucity of real investment opportunities, is already resulting in continued stagnation of the real economy and wages, and increasing reliance on offshoring to countries with lower wages, benefits, and safety regimes. In the process, Newberry performs the inestimable public service of slapping down the pretensions of Niall Ferguson.
Newberry begins by noting where the hot money is going now.
The Institute for Supply Management released their May report this morning.
Just about every category improved. The overall reading of 42.8, while technically contraction, has in the past generally coincided with actual expansion of the manufacturing sector.*
Last month, a little-known company where Summers served on the board of directors received a $42 million investment from a group of investors, including three banks that Summers, Obama’s effective “economy czar,” has been doling out billions in bailout money to: Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and Morgan Stanley. The banks invested into the small start-up company, Revolution Money, right at the time when Summers was administering the “stress test” to these same banks.
The OECD member countries global GDP average numbers are out for Q1, 2009 and it ain't pretty. It even beat Q4, 2008 numbers by 0.1%.
Gross domestic product (GDP) in the OECD area fell by 2.1% in the first quarter of 2009, the largest fall since OECD records began in 1960, according to preliminary estimates, and followed a fall of 2.0% of GDP in the previous quarter.
In the United States GDP fell by 1.6% in the first quarter of 2009, the same rate as in the previous quarter. Japan's GDP declined by 4.0%, following a 3.8% decrease in the previous quarter. GDP in the euro area was down 2.5%, following a 1.6% fall in the previous quarter.
Of the Major Seven* countries, only in France, where GDP fell 1.2%, did the rate of contraction ease in the first quarter.
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