Courtesy of Jesse’s Café Américain Here is the graph associated with a view of the deflating housing bubble that shows we have appreciably fallen, further than the 25% in the blog entry from yesterday. For the details on this view read here. It appears that both sets of numbers, the ones above and the ones from yesterday, have been adjusted somewhat. The...

By Gary Grimes Please understand that this article is about more than safeguarding your money; it’s about saving you headache and heartache. It’s about giving you peace of mind. Before I explain, please allow me to ask a few questions: Have you given much thought about the money in your banking accounts lately? ...

There’s a battle line being drawn, separating those who believe in the dollar carry trade and those who don’t. Roubini and the IMF both believe in it, and thinks it’s a major problem. Critics include David P. Goldman, the pseudonymous “Mad Hedge Fund Trader” contributor to this site, and now Goldman Sachs, or at least...

Zero Hedge The race to the economic/currency bottom today is entirely at the expense of the “burgeoning” European economy, and with Spain and Italy being on the verge of a depression, and France having its usual set of problems, it means that somehow Germany is now the greatest economy in the world. The AUD, GBP and JPY are all underperforming,...

MISH In what should be no surprise, banks are cutting back on small business loans. Please consider Small business loans: $10 billion evaporates. Eight months after President Obama began prodding the nation’s banks to increase their small business lending, the loan numbers continue to move in the opposite direction. The 22 banks that got the...

H/T Zero Hedge Submitted by Yves Lamoureux of Blackmont Capital Most participants these days should take the “thinking outside the box” more seriously. With this in mind, I have studied the behavior of default rates and high yield spreads. In doing so, I also discovered that the general YoY growth in the GDP was mainly going down. The resulting...

CalculatedRisk Click on graph for larger image in new window. Total housing starts were at 529 thousand (SAAR) in October, down 10.6% from the revised September rate, and up from the all time record low in April of 479 thousand (the lowest level since the Census Bureau began tracking housing starts in 1959). Starts had rebounded to 590 thousand...

Courtesy of Phil’s Stok World We like going short on oil today. We like going short on the Dow here, as close to 10,500 as we can until “they” prove they can hold it and not just spike us over the line.  Copper is also a great short at $3.17 this morning as that is just ridiculous too.  We can use 10,500 as a stop on Dow shorts and...

How much do you think you could learn if you had a chance to sit down with over 15 of the most successful day, value, and long term investors of all time? Do you think you’d finally get that one piece of advice that takes your trading from OK to extraordinary? Today you have the chance to pick the brain of one man who has sat down with experts and...

The recession made a lot of people realize how unsustainable their personal financial activities were. Suddenly, people started cutting up their cards, going out to eat less, and generally scrimping. But the governent won’t let you do it! At every turn, the government penalizes you for being responsible, and subsidizes the irresponsible, so that...

MISH GE, the financial company masquerading as a manufacturer, has its eyes on the Pot of Government Stimulus Gold. The financial crisis hasn’t been kind to General Electric Co. Its stock has lost almost half its value, the government has stepped in to prop up its enormous financial arm, and sales have slumped in core industrial businesses. But...

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York didn’t even try to get a good deal for taxpayers when it caved to demands from AIG’s creditors that they should be paid in full. The new report from TARP inspector general Neil Barofsky explains how the New York Fed, then headed by current Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, essentially agreed that AIG’s...

CalculatedRisk In a report (pdf) titled “Factors Affecting Efforts to Limit Payments to AIG Counterparties”, Neil Barofsky, special inspector for TARP, wrote that the “negotiating strategy to pursue concessions from [AIG] counterparties offered little opportunity for success, even in the light of the willingness of one of the counterparty...

Courtesy of Phil’s Stock World 10,500 – that’s 75% of 14,000 in the Dow! On the S&P we topped out all the way up at 1,550 in October, 2007 so 1,162 would be the target there.  For the Nasdaq it’s 2,100 (already over), 7,750 on the NYSE is still far away and 637 on the Russell is tantalizingly close (5%ish).  The SOX still need...

General Motors has just issued its first public income statement since emerging from the ashes of bankruptcy four months ago. The results for the “New GM”? Well, mixed — see details below: GM Co. reported a stomach-wrenching third-quarter earnings loss of $1.15 billion. Yet — it also saw its first monthly sales gain since...