Puerto Rico Defaults a Second Time; Claims of “Scheming” Designed to Crush Island Citizens
Puerto Rico fails to pay $37.3 million in bonds due today. While investors and analysts call it a bluff, the stakes are quite real.
Read more...Category Archives: Credit markets
Ilargi: 2016 Is An Easy Year To Predict
Deflation will become an even more powerful and destructive force in 2016.
Read more...Randy Wray: Debt-Free Money and Banana Republics, Part II
More discussion of the problems with the “debt-free money” construct, to the extent that it can even be called a construct.
Read more...Michael Hudson: The IMF Changes its Rules to Isolate China and Russia
How the West is deploying the IMF to fight the nightmare scenario of US geopolitical strategists: foreign economic independence from the US.
Read more...The Fed’s New “Operation Twist”: Twisted Logic for Bank Profits at the Expense of the Real Economy
How did Janet Yellen and the Federal Reserve justify their rate increase now, despite strong signs that there is little economic basis for doing so?
Call this an exercise in twisted logic, plain and simple.
Read more...The Continuing Fight Over Fannie and Freddie, and the Real Problem of US Mortgages
How understanding the history of Fannie and Freddie, as well as how unnatural US mortgages are, helps explain why the fight over the future of the GSEs continues.
Read more...Debunking “The Big Short”: How Michael Lewis Turned the Real Villains of the Crisis into Heroes
How Michael Lewis’ The Big Short, whether for profit or by accident, has denied the public the truth about what really causes the crisis.
Read more...Even Bank Supporters Arguing for Restoration of Glass Steagall
John Dizard, who perhaps by virtue of being one of the Financial Times’ most original and insightful columnists, is relegated to its weekend “Wealth” section, has written a particularly important pair of articles. Note that Dizard’s ambit is not policy wonkery but apt and often cynical observations about behavior and trading patterns in less visible […]
Read more...German Financialization and the Eurozone Crisis
German financialization and input on the eurozone’s financial architecture promoted deficits, increased systemic risk, and facilitated the onset of Europe’s subsequent crises.
Read more...Wolf Richter: “Distress” in US Corporate Debt Spikes to 2009 Level
Experts expected bankruptcies of highly levered borrowers in 2013-2014, but cheap refis under ZIRP bailed them out. We are again at peak leverage, but this time, there’s no prospect of lower rates to provide a rescue.
Read more...Vulture Capitalists Are the Real Winners of Argentina’s Elections
How Argentina’s former president Kirchner’s loss is vulture fund chief Paul Singer’s big win.
Read more...Wolf Richter: Bloodletting 8 Trading Days in a Row: Junk Bonds Go to Heck
Unnerving events in the junk bonds market.
Read more...Wolf Richter: Fed Trips over Eye-Popping Commercial Real Estate Bubble, Accidentally Looks, Sees “Early Signs” of “Search for Yield”
Commercial real estate has been on a tear that looks to have much more to do with cheap money than real economy prospects.
Read more...Greece and Creditors at Loggerheads Again; Troika Wants More Foreclosures
uropean creditors want to extract more blood from a stone, in this case Greece.
Read more...Who Benefits From Sovereign Debt Crises?
Even though the struggle over Greece’s bailout has receded from the news, with many countries carrying large debt burdens, the need to restructure sovereign debts is not going away. This Real News Network segment gives an overview of the state of play.
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