by divorced one like Bush Honda has done some math, Honda Motor Co. now expects 185 billion yen ($2.06 billion) in group net profit for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2009 — less than a third of the 600 billion yen it earned last fiscal year.For every yen the dollar declines, Honda loses about […]

Canadian Conservatives on the Subprime Bandwagon Noni Mausa From the Canadian newspaper of record, the Globe and Mail, the Saturday, Dec 13 edition. Apparently, like Mary and her little lamb, wherever neo-conservatives go, subprime is sure to follow. Emphases are mine: ============ SPECIAL INVESTIGATION How high-risk mortgages crept northJACQUIE MCNISH AND GREG MCARTHUR December 13, […]

Anyone have a link to the actual Debt Audit Commission report that has Ecuador deciding to default on its illegal debt? None of the news sites that talks about it seems to know of a copy on the web. (Spanish ok, English preferred.)

by cactus Inflation, Deflation… Where The Heck Are We Going? Some folks are telling we are going to have deflation, what with the economy contracting and the vast disappearance of tons of cash through the implosion in value of assets that weren’t really worth what Goldman, Welfare, Queen & Sachs and the rest of ’em […]

rdan (Posted a little late but for comment on the usefulness of such a post pinned to the top when I figure out how. Please comment on the potential and how you would add to the service. Much of the post would be below the fold is one thought, but is above this time for […]

If you need to know why we need government (G) spending, consider that there is no investment (I), and the plight of the consumer is summarized here: The rest is basic algebra.

by cactus Bush, The View From 2004 In 2000, I ran the numbers and it was obvious to me GW’s economic plan was complete BS, so I assumed the rest of what he was telling us couldn’t work either. But I can understand why many people voted for him. 2004 is a bit harder for […]

rdan Hat tip ataxingmatter for the link to this matter in Bloomberg: Dec. 10 (Bloomberg) — Goldman Sachs Group Inc., one of the top five U.S. municipal bond underwriters, is angering politicians and public-finance officials in New Jersey, Wisconsin, California and Florida by recommending that investors purchase credit-default swaps to bet against 11 states’ debt. […]

sort of an op-ed by rdan I have noticed from Yves Smith that the Baltic Dry Index is tanking*, and that letters of credit cost 3-4% to establish instead of the lower 1% or so. Trade has relied on ‘letters of credit’ to keep goods flowing. Correspondingly ‘sovereign bartering’ between governments is increasing as pricing […]

Sometimes, Blog Posts Write Themselves: Cleaning up a hard drive of old files, I ran across these two articles from the middle of last year. First, the WSJ, arbiter of business sanity and purveyor of a positive meme whenever one is to be found, on 28 July 2007—nine months after the general supply of securitizable […]