Category Archives: Credit markets

Trump’s Impact on the Financial Sector and Global Dollar System

A wide-ranging review of how unccordinated Trump policies undermine the dollar and the international banking system, and even each other.

Tucker Slams Predatory Buy Now, Pay Later Loans as the Economist Celebrates This New Debt Slavery Device

A relatively new financial product, buy now pay later loans, is deepening the misery of already over-extended Americans, especially Gen Z

“Could 2008 Happen Again?”

Private debt levels, particularly for real estate, look evocative of the 2008 crisis. But how is a rerun likely to differ?

Federal Reserve, Using Non-Compliant Accounting, Hides Over $100 Billion a Year of Losses and Resulting Negative Equity, Due to Illegal Bank Subsidies

A former Fed economist explains in detail how the central bank has been using dodgy accounting to hide losses from impermissible subsidies

Michael Hudson: From Babylon to Wall Street – How Bankers Make You Poor

A wide-ranging historical discussion with Michael Hudson, tracing the destructive rise the power of lenders from ancient times to today.

Fed’s Rates Not Restrictive for Markets. Financial Conditions Ultra-Loose. Manias Form, Margin Debt Blows Out, Junk Bonds Party in La-La-Land

Despite the Fed depicting its current rate policy as restrictive, manic pricing in many financial markets says otherwise.

Michael Hudson: Church and Finance – From the Crusades to World War I

Michael Hudson extends his historical review from debt in antiquity the role of the Catholic Church in the rise of banking and war finance.

Insurers Dump Catastrophe Risk of Climate Change and Earthquake to Chump Bond Investors. What Could Go Wrong?

Garden variety investors, including retail, are signing up to insure climate change and other disaster risk via catastrophe bonds.

Del Monte Foods Goes Into Bankruptcy: A Trump Tariff Casualty

Struggling Del Monte Foods keeled over due to its exposure to steel and aluminum cost increases from ‘Trump’s tariffs.

Trump’s Self-Destructive Fight with the Fed for Low Interest Rates: His “Fiscal Dominance” Game of Chicken

Trump is fighting another war he can’t win: trying to use interest rates to counter the inflation created by his yawning fiscal deficits.

Michael Hudson: The Collapse of America’s Economic Empire

Michael Hudson, expanding on his seminal work Super Imperialism, chroniciles the rise and in-process decline of US financial hegemony.

Michael Hudson: The U.S. Empire’s Plan for Global Domination

Michael Hudson: War on Iran is part of the US empire’s effort to re-impose its dominance on the global political and financial system

Financial Times on Coming Climate-Change-Driven Meltdown in Real Estate: Gradually, Then Suddenly?

A detailed, yet still softball, take on how climate change damage will wreck property values and much of what passes for an economy

Downgrading Uncle Sam, Not America

An orthodox economist describes inconsistencies in rating agencies’ approach to downgrading US debt and their view of reserve currency status

“Is All Economic Growth Good?”

It can’t be said too often: what most economists call growth is too often what we here call groaf.