Friday 8 August 2008

Alice's bubble wrap

RBS loses £692 million

Chief executive Sir Fred Goodwin calls it a "chastening experience" that he "regrets very much". Any hope of a resignation letter, Sir Fred? Or are you the right man to turn things around?

Fannie Mae loses $2.3 billion

It could have been worse Sir Fred. You could have been the CEO of Fannie.

ECB to offer banks $10 billion to calm markets

Just in case anyone has forgotten, central banks are continuing their liquidity support operations.

Money Market `Plagued' by Libor That Fed Can't Reduce

"Whatever I do, don't seem to work. It only seems to make matters worse".

The credit crunch is one year old. The U.S. market for commercial paper, or short-term IOUs, backed by assets such as mortgages has shrunk 40 percent from its peak in July 2007. The amount borrowed in pounds between banks in the U.K. fell by 70 percent in June from a record in February 2007. The European Central Bank received $100 billion of bids for the $25 billion it offered to financial institutions on July 29, the most since the sales began in December.

Sterling starts to slide

Just the ticket for inflation; higher import prices.

BoE will raise inflation forecast

The Inflation report is out next week. We should see a higher inflation forecast and more lame talk about balancing acts.

What will the US government do about Freddie and Fannie

With both institutions enjoying government guarantees, the US Treasury is in a hole. If only we had something like Freddie here in the UK.

Venezuela's inflation hits 33.7 percent in July

This is exactly what the people living in the Venezuelan barrios need; a poverty enhancing double digit inflation rate.

What happens when the credit crunch finally subsides?

Something needs to be done about those investment banks. A stiff dose of regulation? Definitely.

$1 trillion bank losses?

Some think this number is a tadge conservative.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

The crunch is about to get much worse.

Anonymous said...

Please keep going Alice. Some people do treasure your charts.
Thanks.

Anonymous said...

$1 trillion excessive? Maybe that's the net amount after all the taxpayer bailouts are factored in.

Anonymous said...

This from Reuter:
http://uk.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idUKL854982820080808

"...More than half of all private tenants polled said they were increasingly concerned about being able to afford their rent, AXA said.

"Our research shows that over a third of people privately renting are doing so because they can't get a mortgage at the moment," Mike Keating, managing director of personal lines intermediary at AXA, said in a statement.

"On the surface of it, this looks like the rental market should be buoyant. But if you consider that many of those renting may be struggling to make ends meet it is certainly not all good news for buy-to-let owners," he said.

Can someone explain to me how it is that renters who are "struggling to make ends meet" are going to not struggle to pay mortgages? Does anyone really know what the hell is going on here?