Senaste Nytt - Latest news at Rolf Englund IntCom - Internetional Communications

The "peak oil" theory no longer just comes from internet crackpots and conspiracy theorists;
now geologists, market analysts and oil prospectors believe that this scenario is becoming reality.
Michael Savage The Independent 12 June 2008
BP: Oljan räcker 41 år till
DI 2008-06-11
The future of energy
A fundamental change is coming sooner than you might think
The Economist print edition, June 19th 2008

Is it possible for the vast mass of humanity to enjoy the living standards of today’s high-income countries?
This is, arguably, the biggest question confronting humanity in the 21st century.
Martin Wolf, Financial Times June 10 2008

Vad var det då som bröt den goda utvecklingen och ledde till den finansiella krisen?
Något förenklat kan man säga att god tillgång på kapital på de finansiella marknaderna resulterade i en kombination av mycket låga räntor, stigande tillgångspriser och kreditexpansion världen över.
Samtidigt fanns svagheter i regleringarna av de finansiella marknaderna.
Globala obalanser byggdes upp och det som till slut bröt utvecklingen var
nedgången på bostadsmarknaden och bolånemarknaden i USA.
Stefan Ingves, DN Debatt 31/12 2008

The US is not strong enough to rescue the world economy on its own.
The US have, at present, structurally deficient capacity to produce tradable goods and services.
Martin Wolf, Financial Times, January 6 2009
Highly recommended

How to prevent the Great Depression of 2009
The global financial system is undergoing a meltdown that has not been seen since the 1930s and
nobody seems to know what to do about it.
How did we get to this point and how can we move forward?
Roger E.A Farmer, Financial Times December 30, 2008

We know that the current driving force behind this downturn is “deleveraging”.
Overindebted households and undercapitalised banks are adjusting their balance sheets, building up savings in the first case and restricting lending in the latter.
There is no chance of a sustained economic recovery until that process is almost complete.
Wolfgang Münchau, Financial Times, December 28 2008

October Home Prices in 20 U.S. Metro Areas Fall 18%
Dec. 30 2008(Bloomberg)

Secular gods visibly fail: in 1989, communism collapsed;
in 2008, came the turn of financial capitalism.
As panic spread, governments ended up nationalising the financial systems of the west.
This is no longer capitalism as we knew it. But it is not the end of market economies either.
Financial Times editorial, December 26 2008

What lies behind the credit squeeze is the combination of reduced trust in and decimated capital at financial institutions. People and institutions don't want to deal with anyone unless they have substantial capital to back up their promises,
yet the crisis has depleted capital across the board.
The obvious solution is to put in more capital
Paul Krugman, The New York Review of Books, December 18, 2008

The prosperity of a few years ago, such as it was — profits were terrific, wages not so much —
depended on a huge bubble in housing, which replaced an earlier huge bubble in stocks.

And since the housing bubble isn’t coming back, the spending that sustained the economy in the pre-crisis years isn’t coming back either.
Paul Krugman, New York Times, December 22, 2008

Gosh it was only six years ago that I cemented my place in stock market history by
predicting that the Dow would fall from 8,500 to 5,000,
instead of going up to 14,000 where it peaked in October of 2007

Bill Gross, December 2008

"Will the B-52s arrivwe in time?"
I have been predicting for a few years that the bursting of the housing bubble,
in combination with the unwinding of the epic credit binge,
was going to lead to extreme carnage on the downside, as consumers and financial institutions would both be impaired.

That is where we are today.
Bill Fleckenstein, MSN Money 22/12 2008

Hushållen blev drygt 280 miljarder kronor fattigare under tredje kvartalet 2008.
Det visar SCB:s Sparbarometer.
DI 2008-12-22

Keynes offers us the best way to think about the financial crisis
Martin Wolf, Financial Times, December 23 2008
Highly recommended

Min sedvanliga julhälsning
In Hoc Anno Domini

When Saul of Tarsus set out on his journey to Damascus the whole of the known world lay in bondage. There was one state, and it was Rome. There was one master for it all, and he was Tiberius Caesar. Everywhere there was civil order, for the arm of the Roman law was long. Everywhere there was stability, in government and in society, for the centurions saw that it was so.
Wall Street Journal Editorial since 1949 published annually

Det är ironiskt att Nassim Nicholas Taleb vunnit världsrykte för att han förutspådde finanskrisen när hans stora poäng är att det är omöjligt att göra prognoser.
Men han har gång på gång påpekat att finanskrisen alls inte är någon svart svan, utan en helt vit svan.
The Times utnämnde honom till »the hottest thinker in the world« i en stort uppslagen artikel i somras.
Fokus 12/12 2008

Protectionist dominoes are beginning to tumble across the world
The riots have begun.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the International Monetary Fund, is worried enough to ditch a half-century of IMF orthodoxy, calling for a fiscal boost worth 2pc of world GDP to "prevent global depression".
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 20 Dec 2008

From a European perspective, there is an acute danger of an extreme exchange-rate overshoot, which on top of the fall in global demand for European export goods could have devastating effects on exporters, much worse than anything we have seen so far.
Unlike 10 years ago, there is not much scope for wage cuts this time, so this crisis will hit profits.
Wolfgang Münchau, Financial Times, December 21 2008

Innan Sverige styrdes av visa män från Katrineholm ville socialdemokraterna införa det jugoslaviska systemet i Sverige.
»Jag är övertygad om att det ekonomiska system som byggts upp i Jugoslavien … tillhör en av vårt århundrades mest betydelsefulla sociala innovationer«, skrev professorn och s-riksdagsmannen Bo Södersten.
Löntagarfonderna, som var avsedda att etablera det jugoslaviska arbetarparadiset i Sverige, finansierades genom en avgift på företagen
Grovt räknat två tredjedelar av fonderna finns kvar, cirka 20 miljarder i 1992 års penningvärde. De borde Borg nu skifta tillbaka till de rätta ägarna.
Tomas Fischer, Fokus 19/12 2008

In a guest article, Alan Greenspan says banks will need much thicker capital cushions than they had before the bust
The Economist print edition, December 18th 2008

We are living through the painful end of an age of leverage which saw total private and public debt in the US rise from about 155 per cent of gross domestic product in the early 1980s to something like 342 per cent by the middle of this year
Once, monetarism and Keynesianism were considered mutually exclusive economic theories. So severe is this crisis that governments all over the world are trying both simultaneously.
Niall Ferguson,Financial Times, December 18 2008

En bank får låna ut 10–20 gånger sitt egna kapital.
Förlorar banken en miljard måste den alltså kräva låntagarna på 10–20 miljarder.
Det får konsekvenser i den reala ekonomin.

Tomas Fischer, Fokus 19/12 2008

“You still have a massive paranoia in the marketplace and you’ve got that safety-at-any-cost mentality,” .
“People are not buying Treasury bills because they think the yields are attractive.
They are buying them because they are afraid to put money anywhere else.”

Bloomberg Dec. 15 2008

Was inflation sown in moderation?
"The Great Inflation and Its Aftermath", By Robert Samuelson
Review by Clive Crook, Financial Times December 14 2008

We should not try to avoid 1929. We have already failed.
The best we can do now is to avoid 1930, 1931 and 1932

What about the €200bn European Union stimulus package that was agreed in a watered-down form by EU leaders on Friday?
Unfortunately, it is a public relations exercise first and foremost, designed to dupe people into believing that the EU is finally doing something.
Wolfgang Münchau, Financial Times, December 14 2008

/Nominal/ rates on three-month bills turned negative on Dec. 9 for the first time.
The same day, the U.S. sold $30 billion of four-week bills at a /nominal/ zero percent rate.
Bloomberg Dec. 15 2008

SEB tror att en eventuell devalvering i Lettland på i storleksordningen 15-20 procent kanske inte vore värre än ett alternativt scenario med hårda åtstramningar för att undvika en devalvering.
DI 9/12 2008

"Basically, a giant Ponzi scheme"
Fraud which has lost $50bn
Bernard Madoff has been charged. Among the banks which have been hit are Britain's HSBC and RBS, Spain's Santander and France's BNP Paribas
BBC 15/12 2008

Anders Borg lovar stötta Lettland
DI 2008-12-10

I Lettland arresterades nyligen en ekonom av säkerhetspolisen, efter att ha uttryckt oro för valutans fortsatta stabilitet.

This is the endgame for the global imbalances
If the surplus countries do not expand domestic demand relative to potential output, the open world economy may even break down.
As in the 1930s, this is now a real danger.
Martin Wolf, Financial Times, December 2 2008

Med en inriktning på finanspolitik måste regeringen vidta ofinansierade skattesänkningar och utgiftshöjningar. Detta strider naturligtvis känslomässigt mot alla amatörekonomers sätt att göra analogier mellan ett hushålls och statens ekonomi. Utan ekonomisk utbildning tror man att staten måste agera på samma sätt som hushållen. Det är detta fenomen som också bidrar till att man kan ställa upp en teori om "ricardiansk ekvivalens".
Om hushållen faktiskt tror att statens budgetunderskott bidrar till att pensioner, a-kassa, sjukförsäkring, barnbidrag och liknande måste skaras ned eller avskaffas blir det ekonomiskt rationellt för den enskilde att drastiskt öka sitt sparande. Då blir finanspolitiska åtgärder verkningslösa eller rentav kontraproduktiva. Anders Borg har hänvisat till denna effekt som förklaring till att han inte velat ta till kraftiga motåtgärder.
Danne Nordling 6/12 2008

Anders Borg kräver omedelbara reduceringar av bolåneräntorna.
"Godisskålen är inte till för att bankerna ska vara där och nalla", säger
Anders Borg (m) efter att Riksbanken meddelat sin sänkning av reporäntan till 2 procent.
Di 2008-12-04

Interest rate cuts work their way through to the real economy by a number of transmission channels.
Cui bono? The banks, of course. The bank-bailout channel will be the only monetary transmission mechanism to function like clockwork.
So do not be fooled by anybody who says that the central bank should cut interest rates for the benefit of innocent citizens
Wolfgang Munchau, FT January 20 2008

Att göra något i närheten av det Svenskt Näringsliv talar om är ju helt ansvarslöst.
Det skulle leda till att människor inte kände något förtroende för de offentliga finanserna.
Det privata sparandet skulle öka och i slutändan skulle den expansiva effekten utebli

Anders Borg i Fokus 28/11 2008, reporter Anders Jonson

Regeringen bör ge en generell garanti för bankernas verksamhet
Dessutom behövs insatser på 50-60 miljarder kronor, utöver regeringens budget
Pengarna måste användas så att man når största möjliga sysselsättningseffekt
Därför bör man skjuta till mer pengar hos kommuner och landsting
Assar Lindbeck i DN 3/12 2008

One might not expect much from economists, but one would surely expect them to warn us of a crisis on this scale.
Speech given by Martin Wolf, chief economics commentator, at the FT’s annual economists’ drinks party in London
Financial Times, 27/11 2008

Ja-sägaren Heikensten
Rolf Englund blog

Peter Wolodarski ny politisk chefredaktör på DN
"Jag har blivit ännu mer övertygad om att Sverige ska vara med fullt ut i Europasamarbetet, inklusive EMU"
DN print 28/11 2008

“Why didn’t we see this coming?”
“What do you mean ‘we,’ white man?”
Paul Krugman, årets nobelpristagare, New York Times, 27/11
Highly recommended

The vision thing
Her Majesty’s question ("If these things were so large, how come everyone missed them?")
Chris Giles, FT, November 25 2008

Bostadspriserna är högre än vad som är långsiktigt fundamentalt motiverat och kommer därför att falla.
Enligt BKN:s bedömning är felprissättningen på småhus ca 20 procent.
Bostadspriserna kan falla än mer, om dagens låga realränta stiger.
Statens Bostadskreditnämnd, 28/11 2008

Felet med Mosesteorin
EU-kommissionen under Romano Prodis ledning har förstått att studera vilka lärdomar Europas beslutsfattare bör dra av den amerikanska modellen och dess väldiga framgångar
SvD-ledare 2000-03-02

Aktieägarna i Swedbank röstade ja till den föreslagna nyemissionen på 12,4 miljarder kronor.
Därmed har banken stärkt sig mot stigande förluser från Baltikum, men frågan är om det är tillräckligt med pengar.
Swedbank har nära 200 miljarder kronor utlånat till länderna i Baltikum.
Patricia Hedelius, DN 26/11 2008

För det första bör det vara fråga om mycket stora konjunktursvängningar.
För det andra bör det krävas att finanspolitiken ska kunna uppnå något mer än vad bara penningpolitiken kan göra.
Allt talar för att dessa dubbla kriterier nu är uppfyllda.
Lars Calmfors, ordförande i Finanspolitiska rådet, DN Debatt 25/11 2008

Drivkrafterna bakom dagens amerikanska kris och den svenska 90-talskrisen är i stort sett identiska.
På grund av den fasta kronkursen kunde Riksbanken inte driva en självständig penningpolitik riktad mot bubblan.
Lars Jonung, kolumn, DN 25/11 2008

Fed's weapon of mass desperation
The mother of all bond market crashes

Wolfgang Münchau, Financial Times, November 23 2008

The Ka-Poom Theory
The deflation-inflation two-step
Eric Janszen 11-13-2008

House prices may fall 40-50 percent
Wolfgang Münchau, Financial Times, November 23 2008

POLICY IMPLICATIONS OF GLOBAL IMBALANCES
The world will be living for a considerable period of time with some risk of large movements in relative prices, greater volatility in asset prices, and periods of slower growth
Speech by Timothy F Geithner, President and Chief Executive Officer, Federal Bank of New York
Chatham House, 23 January 2006, yes 2006

Every tumultuous period of financial boom and bust comes to be defined by a word or catchphrase.
Tulipmania. The Great Depression. The dotcom bubble.
The word that could define the financial times we are now living through — and the economic pain that has begun — is leverage.
Bill Powell, Time Magazine, October 23 2008

A mere 5.4% decline in the value of Citigroup's assets would make Citigroup insolvent.
Michael Shedlock, November 1, 2007, yes 2007

Citigroup’s crisis deepened as its shares continued to slump in spite of a planned investment
by Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, its largest individual investor.
The 26.4 per cent fall in the shares, which closed at $4.71, prompted Citi’s directors and executives to look at strategic options, includes selling part or all of the company.
Financial Times, November 20 2008

The main object of Alistair Darling, the British chancellor, is to inject more spending power into the British economy by a mixture of tax cuts and spending increases
The most frequent objection is to ask: “Where will the money come from?”
The short answer is: the Bank of England printing works in Debden.

Samuel Brittan, Financial Times, November 20 2008

Dow Jones nosar på index 8000
Se tankeväckande diagram

US economic, military and political dominance is likely to decline over the next two decades
The National Intelligence Council (NIC) predicts also says the dollar will no longer be the world's major currency
BBC 21 November 2008

It’s often forgotten that when Bush come to power in early 2001 the US economy was in recession. Since then there has been three waves of tax cuts – the last in 2003 – and a remarkable improvement in the performance of the US economy.
More than 4 million new jobs have been created, and unemployment has dropped below 5 %. Productivity has been increasing very fast. And the federal budget deficit has started to shrink as a result of the rapid growth in tax income.
Even with the very high rates of increase in federal spending, on present trends the federal budget might well be in balance by 2008.
Carl Bildt blog 13/11 2005
RE: The trend is your friend, until it isn't.

Jobless claims surge to a 16-year high and the number of Americans continuing on benefits nears 26-year high.
CNN 20/11 2008

De amerikanska storbankerna måste stärka sina balansräkningar med 1.000-1.200 miljarder dollar i eget kapital.
Långfristiga skulder är inte lösningen
Paul Miller, cit i DI/Reuers 20 december 2008

Rick Wagoner, chairman and chief executive of General Motors
“There is absolutely no plan, strategy or intention for GM to file for bankruptcy.”
Financial Times, November 17, 2005, yes 2005

Paul Volcker
"There has been leveraging in the economy beyond imagination, and nobody was saying we need to do something,"
"There are cycles in human nature and it is up to regulators to moderate these excesses.
Alan was not a big regulator."
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Daily Telegraph, 17 Nov 2008

Good question, Ma'am
"If these things were so large,
how come everyone missed them?"

Alan Beattie, Financial Times, November 14 2008
Highly recommended

Dutch insurer Aegon said it may buy a small U.S. thrift company
to qualify for potentially more than $1 billion in U.S. government support

CNBC 18/11 2008

Det är stabiliseringspolitikens kris vi ser idag.
Det är förhoppningen att regeringarna har sådana kraftfulla verktyg, att om ekonomin börjar sladda skall det gå att sätta in motåtgärder så att vi slipper krascha i diket, som nu har gäckats.
Denna föreställning är fel - alla vackra teorier till trots.
Danne Nordling 18/11 2008

Roubini's Latest "Why Things Are Hopeless" List Hits New Record, 20 Items! Be sure to read down to his last point, where he draws his bottom line,
a peak to trough fall in GDP of 10%.
Naked capitalism 16/11 2008

Inflation or Deflation?
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Daily Telegraph, 13 Nov 2008

We're All Banks Now
Is there any financial institution that does not want to become a bank or a bank holding company?
Mish 16/11 2008

Det hade vi ingen aaaning om
Konjunkturen svartnar snabbare än någon hade kunna räkna med.
Chefsekonomerna Sven-Arne Svensson och Stefan Fölster, DI 17/11 2008

Det är kanske Milton Friedmans stadiga penningmängdstillväxt som är det enda som kan göras i stabiliserande riktning.
I den här krisen är det dock för sent.
Danne Nordling 17/11 2008

Svenskt Näringslivs svar på Mona om Tony Blair:
"Få talare är så karismatiska som honom."
Rolf Englund blog 17/11 2008

Svenskt Näringsliv gör helt om, dock utan att göra en pudel
Nu behövs en aktiv statlig finanspolitik där regeringen släpper loss reformer och offentliga jobb för cirka 50 miljarder det närmaste året.
Svenskt Näringslivs verkställande direktör Urban Bäckström och chefsekonom Stefan Fölster, DN Debatt 16/11 2008

Svenskt Näringsliv gör helt om, dock utan att göra en pudel
Rolf Englund blog 2008-11-16

Den allt djupare lågkonjunkturen bör mötas med stimulanser från så många håll som möjligt.
Växande underskott i ländernas statsfinanser måste accepteras tills världsekonomin återhämtar sig.
Däremot måste varje land självt få avgöra i vilken omfattning.
DN, huvudledare 15/11 2008

Det bästa västvärlden kan göra för u-länderna är att så snabbt som möjligt få slut på recessionen
för detta krävs massiv keynesiansk efterfrågestimulans, menar David Weil.
Det är svårt att ge något annat recept i dag.
Men när krisen är över bör Keynes åter få vila och underskotten saneras.
Ragnar Roos, signerat, DNs ledarsida 15/11 2008

"I'm a market-oriented guy, but not when I'm faced with the prospect of a global meltdown,"
President George W. Bush, 14 Nov 2008

U.S. retail sales dropped by 2.8% in October -- the largest monthly drop since records began in 1992.
Sales have fallen for four straight months, a longer streak than during the 2001 recession, with declines worsening each month. As consumers pull back, the threat rises of a deep and prolonged recession.
Wall Street Journal 15/11 2008

Det gamla ATP var instabilt. En reform var nödvändig.
Skulle man då kunna övergå från socialistisk skattefinansiering till liberal avgiftsfinansiering?
Mot alla odds gick socialdemokraterna med på detta.

Detta var utredaren Margit Gennsers förtjänst.
Danne Nordling 12/11 2008

I media inskränker sig pensionsdebatten ofta till allmänt gnäll över svårbegripliga oranga kuvert och problemen med att välja rätt PPM-fonder i ett alltför sort utbud.
Det finns många viktiga frågor att diskutera när det gäller att utveckla pensionsreformen. För alla som vill delta i en sådan diskussion är Margit Gennsers bok en utmärkt startpunkt.
I den redovisas såväl de politiska turerna runt den stora pensionsreformen som huvuddragen i pensionssystemets hittilsvarande utveckling och framtida intressanta reformmöjligheter.
Dick Kling 13/11 2008

Rearranging the Deckchairs on the Titanic?
Silvia Wadhwa, CNBC. 6 Oct 2008

Riksgälden kan idag ta över ett finansiellt institut, som i fallet med Carnegie.
Ett sådant förfarande där Riksgälden går in som ägare görs möjligt av den stabilitetsplan för det finansiella systemet som Riksdagen beslutade om för drygt två veckor sedan.
Riksbankschef Stefan Ingves, Finansutskottet, 2008-11-13
Kommentar av Rolf Englund:
Det fanns alltså ingen lagstiftning på plats dessförinnan, trots bankkrisen 1992

So angry is Main Street, you could club an investment banker like a seal pup
and stand a reasonable chance of being cheered by judge and jury.

Jeff Randall, Daily Telegraph, 7 Nov 2008

The Bank of England’s extraordinary 1.5 percentage point interest rate cut to 3 per cent is
scary, justified and irrelevant.
Fiscal policy is our most potent instrument
Wolfgang Münchau, Financial Times, November 9 2008

Om bromsen skulle slå till snart kommer det att påverka pensionerna från och med 2010.
E24 2008-10-16

Det var inte bara Wall Streets finansföretag som byggde ekonomiska korthus med hjälp av högbelåning under de år då likviditeten flödade och räntorna var låga.
Även de amerikanska hushållen konsumerade som om det inte fanns någon morgondag genom att låna på villan och med ständigt kontokortskrediter trots att reallönerna knappast ökade alls.
Det var då, det.
Lars-Georg Bergkvist, SvD 9/11 2008

AIG is to receive a new $150bn US government bail-out
that will allow the troubled insurer to reduce interest payments and give it more time to sell assets and save itself from collapse.
Financial Times, November 9 2008

Kina presenterade på söndagen ett enormt stimulanspaket för att dämpa effekterna av finanskrisen
Det kinesiska stimulanspaket är värt omkring 4 650 miljarder kronor fram till 2010.
SvD E24 2008-11-09

Svenskt Näringsliv: Vi anser att aktiv stabiliseringspolitik inte skall bedrivas.
Skall Urban Bäckström och Svenskt Näringsliv tvingas göra en pudel?
Rolf Englund blog 2008-10-26

How can the next administration reconcile its longer-term goals for the economy with the imperatives of the economic crisis?
Getting this right will not be easy, but is the key to success or failure in Mr Obama’s presidency.
Clive Crook, Financial Times, November 9 2008

Svenskt Näringsliv: Vi anser att aktiv stabiliseringspolitik inte skall bedrivas.
Skall Urban Bäckström och Svenskt Näringsliv tvingas göra en pudel?
Rolf Englund blog 2008-10-26

The big difference in diagnosis is between those who still think in terms of a conventional business cycle with output fluctuating in familiar snakelike fashion around a stable trend given by “supply side” factors, and those who believe that something more apocalyptic has happened.
Samuel Brittan, Financial Times, November 6 2008
Higlhly recommended

Nybyggnationen väntas nästa år falla med 40 procent, jämfört med år 2006. Antalet påbörjade hyresrätter har halverats.
Har regeringen inte förstått allvaret bakom krisen? Jobbkrisen riskerar att slå hårt mot byggsektorn.
Vi ställer oss bakom Konjunkturinstitutets bedömning att Sverige skulle tjäna på ett tillfälligt ROT-avdrag.
Mona Sahlin och partiets ekonomisk-politiska talesperson Thomas Östros, DN Debatt 8/11 2008


Det behövs bättre regleringar av finansmarknaderna,
men absolut inte någon överreglering som kan hindra marknaderna från att fungera effektivt.

DN-ledare 7/11 2008
Kommentar av Rolf Englund
Jaha, jaha


"Halal-tv"
Man intervjuade Mona Sahlin och hon lät som vanligt som om hon läste högt ur en barnbok.
Niklas Wahllöf, DN Kultur 5/11 2008


USA:s ekonomi befinner sig i en brydsam situation.
Frågan är nu vad som skulle ha kunnat göras annorlunda vid 1930-talskrisen och som Obama därför borde satsa på idag.
Danne Nordling 6/11 2008


Experterna på kreditvärderingsföretag som Moodys, Standard & Poor's och Fitch bidrog till att förvärra finanskrisen.
Det säger den svenske Harvardforskaren Bo Becker
Dagens Industri 7/11 2008
Kommentar av Rolf Englund
Det behöver man väl inte vara Harvardforskare för att förstå


Obamas segermarginal mindre än hälften av Nej-sidans i EMU-omröstningen
Rolf Englund blog 5/11 2008

The U.S. economy is spiraling downward into recession and gargantuan budget deficits.
The Humpty Dumpty of the housing and consumer bubbles cannot be put back together, no matter how many Wall Street bailouts, liquidity injections or tax rebates are put in place.
A country that sustains zero or negative household saving rates for years and borrows heavily from abroad is bound to pay a heavy price, and that time has come for the United States.
Jeffrey Sachs, November 5, 2008

Keynes had no sure cure for slumps
The recent collapse of speculation on houses is a non-monetary phenomenon
Edmund Phelps, Financial Times, November 4 2008

Comment by Rolf Englund:
Please note that Phelps says nothing, repeat nothing, about what we should do to cure slumps.
And Phelps have got the "Nobel prize" in Economics.


Pär Nuders problem är att han alltid varit den smartaste killen i rummet och vetat om det.
Det tycker inte jag är något problem. Jag tycker inte att det är något problem med politiker som varit gästprofessorer på Harvard, är efterfrågade i internationella sammanhang och använder ord som »pueril« i dagligt tal.
Katrine Kielos Fokus 31 oktober 2008


Katrine Kielos skriver riktigt bra
Och söt är hon också

Det är nästan så att man blir feminist, som Göran Persson

More pressing than discretionary fiscal action is getting the banks to lend.
This is why they have been helped, in the first place. Unfortunately, their marginal cost of funds, plus required margins, is above rates they are expected to charge.
This is why sharp cuts in official intervention rates are vital.
Martin Wolf, Financial Times 30/10 2008


Jobbpolitik, räntepolitik och finanspolitik verkar vara de tre metoder som finns för att påverka den reala ekonomin vid en begynnande lågkonjunktur.
Räntesänkningar kan dock leda till stora obalanser på sikt. Och finanspolitiken kan leda till kontroversiella budgetunderskott.
Så vad göra?
Danne Nordling 3/11 2008

The Fed’s target rate is now back at 1 per cent, where it hit bottom in 2003.
As stress in the real economy intensifies, the Fed was right to use much of its remaining firepower.
Financial Times editorial 29/10 2008


I debatten sägs det nu vara mer ädelt att söka förklaringar än att peka ut syndabockar, men varför det?
Krisen är inte någon naturkatastrof
Anders Isaksson, kolumn DN 31/10 2008


Lagförslaget om en stabilitetsfond uppbyggd av avgifter från bankerna
Risken är överhängande att den blir en perfekt grogrund för nästa finansbubbla.
Nicklas Storåkers, verkställande direktör för Avanza Bank, DN Debatt 29/10 2008

To put it in monetary policy terms, the Fed is boosting the supply of money to offset the decline in velocity,
which is the amount of turnover in the money stock.
Velocity has been falling like a newspaper stock amid the panic.
For our readers who recall their economic textbooks, Irving Fisher's famous equation is MV=PT.
Wall Street Journal editorial 30/10 2008

The world's financial firms have now lost $2.8 trillion
the Bank of England has estimated
1.2 million homeowners in the UK now face going into negative equity
BBC 28 October 2008


Flash
Lissabonfördraget lämnar efter sig ett påträngande behov att följderna av vårt medlemskap i EU återspeglas i grundlagen
Lissabonfördraget tar de sista avslutande stegen i en flerårig reformprocess
För att synliggöra detta behöver regeringsformens ändras
Rapport från Sieps, Författare: Carl Fredrik Bergström, oktober 2008

The best recipe for avoiding a global recession
Before our political leaders get too fancy remaking capitalism
they should co-ordinate macroeconomic policies to stop a steep global downturn

Jeffrey Sachs, Financial Times, October 27 2008


Innan politikerna börjar göra om kapitalismen bör de undvika en global nedgång, anser Jeffrey Sachs
Rolf Englund blog 2008-10-28


Givetvis ska alla betala skatt på reavinster, men ...
Regeringen har således infört ett system som motverkar rörligheten på bostadsmarknaden och dessutom kommer att driva ett antal hushåll till konkurs.
Carl-Johan Jargenius, SvD Synpunkt 28 oktober 2008


"Börsutvecklingen har varit mera svängig i Sverige än i USA."
Dannne Nordling 23/10 2008


Skall Urban Bäckström och Svenskt Näringsliv tvingas göra en pudel?
"Vi anser att aktiv stabiliseringspolitik inte skall bedrivas."
Rolf Englund blog 26/10 2008

Carry trade funding currencies - such as Yen, Swiss franc, US dollar - are appreciating on a trade-weighted basis.
High yield currencies facing selloffs as carry trades unwind on deleveraging
RGE Monitor 27 oktober 2008


Danmark har nyligen tvingats höja räntan för att bevara riktkursen till euron.
Det sker i ett läge när Danmark precis som Sverige snarast behöver lägre ränta för att mildra konjunkturnedgången.

Fredrik Braconier SvD 16 oktober 2008


Finanskrisen startades inte av bankirer på Wall Street, utan av den amerikanska kongressen och Clintonadministrationen.
Nils-Eric Sandberg, Kristianstadsbladet 23 oktober 2008


För att försvara den danska kronan höjer Nationalbanken räntan med 50 punkter till 5,50 procent.
Nationalbanken har spenderat stora delar av valutareserven
"I början av månaden hade man omkring 160 miljarder danska kronor, de nya siffrorna kommer i månadsskiftet, men mitt antagande är att den summan minskat med cirka 40 procent."

DI 2008-10-24


Den danska kronan är knuten till euron. Den får i princip inte röra sig ett öre mot euron
- Det är ett pris som de tycker det är värt att betala för att ha den här stabila växelkursen.
De är nästan med i EMU, men ändå inte.
Jag förstår inte riktigt vad poängen är, säger Nordeas chefekonom Appelgren.

DN 2008-10-24

Why did central banks not follow BIS 1995 agreement?
Financial Times, letters, October 22 2008 from Mr Jim Blum.

“I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interest of organisations, specifically banks and others, was such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders,”
I don’t know about you, but when I read such a naïve statement coming from the man who was once the most powerful banker in the world, I’m the one who’s in a state of shock and disbelief.
Ian Wyatt, October 24 2008

Mr. Greenspan was asked when he knew there was a housing bubble and when he told the public about it.
He answered that he never anticipated home prices could fall so much.
"I did not forecast a significant decline because we had never had a significant decline in prices,"
Wall Street Journal, October 24, 2008

bubble in housing prices
Alan Greenspan's tragic mistake
negative real interest rates from 2002 into 2005
It was a painful spectacle to watch.
Wall Street Journal, editorial, October 24, 2008


Den japanska yenen skvalpar - Börsen i Tokyo störtdyker
Rolf Englund blog 2008-10-24

A strong yen is causing concerns about Japanese export earnings, as
the US dollar fell below 96 yen, its lowest level for 13 years.
BBC 24 October 2008


Finanskrisen har gjort kronan till en skvalpvaluta.
Försvagningen av kronan är ett faktum, men orsakerna förblir höljda i dunkel.
Johan Schück, DN 2008-10-23

Mea Culpa
Greenspan told Congress he is "shocked" at the breakdown in U.S. credit markets and
said he was "partially" wrong to resist regulation of some securities.

CNBC, 23 October 2008


Kommentar av Rolf Englund:
Alltid något. Och när skall Carl Bildt erkänna att han gjorde något misstag under kronkursförsvaret?


Det är knappast troligt att bankerna vill låna så mycket som 1.500 miljarder kronor från staten.
Detta är ett mycket väl tilltaget belopp, som i storlek motsvarar hälften av Sveriges BNP.
Johan Schück, DN 2008-10-22


Över 90 procent av alla pengar i Estland som lånats ut har skett i euro. I Lettland och Litauen är situationen likartad.
Skulle en devalvering ske blir lånen väldigt mycket dyrare för kunderna, och betydligt svårare att betala tillbaka
SvD Näringsliv, reporter Johanna Petersson, 23 oktober 2008


Fastighetsprofessorn Hans Lind spår flera år av långsamt fallande priser.
Hans egna "sketna radhus i Farsta" mer än tredubblades i värde från 800.000 kronor vid köpet för tio år sedan till 2,4 Mkr för en månad sedan.
"Det här kan bara inte fortsätta", tänkte fastighetsprofessorn
Dagens Industri, reporter Linda Öhrn, 2008-10-22


Finanskrisen tilltar i styrka
Rolf Englund blog 2008-10-22


Nytt ras för kronan
På morgonen kostade en euro 10:15 kronor och en dollar 7:95 kronor.
Sedan i går eftermiddag har kronan försvagats med 12 öre mot euron och 36 öre mot dollarn.
DI 2008-10-22 09:14


Rolf Englund: Det är väl mycket illa att det behövs
Fed said it would finance up to $540bn in purchases of short-term debt from money market mutual funds
Financial Times, October 21 2008


I normala fall skulle de baltiska valutorna tappa i värde.
Men eftersom länderna har ambitioner att gå med i det europeiska valutasamarbetet har man fasta växelkurser
Patricia Hedelius, DN 2008-10-21


Finanskrisen
Skuldbördan fördelas med inflation
Rolf Englund, Barometern, 20/10 2008


Konjunkturcykeln är en del av marknadsekonomin, ungefär som förkylningar är en del av livet
Skillnaden mellan 2008 och 1914, 1929 eller 1939 är betryggande.
Niklas Ekdal, Signerat DN 19/10 2008

Swedish krona falls on Baltic exposure
Financial Times, October 16 2008


Carl Bildt, Bo Lundgren och Finanskrisen
Rolf Englund blog 2008-10-18

PIMCO’s Investment Committee to a man (no women yet) believes that capitalism is the best and most effective economic system ever devised,
but it has a flaw: it is inherently unstable.

Bill Gross, October 2008


PJ Anders Linder:
Var är brudarna?
Moderaterna har två kvinnliga vice ordförande Kristina Axén Olin och Gunilla Carlsson
men hur ofta har man ansträngt sig för att ge dem chans att uppträda som ledare på nationell nivå?
PJs blog 16/10 2008

The Economic Blue Screen of Death
The engine of our GDP growth has essentially been turned off.
Look at the fall in the numbers for yourself
John Mauldin, October 17 2008
Very Important Article

A Capitalist Manifesto
Markets remain our best hope for a better future.
Judy Shelton Wall Street Journal 13/10 2008

US Housing starts have fallen nearly two-thirds from their peak of 2.3 million in January 2006, and
were at the lowest annual pace since January 1991.
CNN 17/10 2008

Euroskeptics are easy to find in the Nordic capitals, and they won't accept that the financial turmoil has boosted the argument for the common currency.
"That's a totally ludicrous (amusing or laughable through obvious absurdity) assertion.
My view is that the euro will burst, and the sooner the better," said Rolf Englund, an economist who campaigned against the euro when Swedes rejected the currency in a 2003 referendum.

International Herald Tribune, October 16, 2008


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The current crisis reminds us that, in a free economy, the price of the greatly improved long-term performance that only free economies can provide is an ineradicable economic cycle.
As John Maynard Keynes pointed out in the 1930s, the cause of the cycle is alternating moods of optimism and pessimism, and
its motor is credit, which enables optimism to determine economic activity.
Nigel Lawson. Time Magazine, October. 01, 2008

For those of us who believe in free markets, these interventions are unpleasant.
These drastic steps might have been avoided had Treasury and the FDIC acted sooner,
yet now they are necessary given the panic that threatens the larger economy.
Wall Street Journal editorial OCTOBER 15, 2008

Hope for Homeowners gives the FHA the authority to back 300 billion dollars worth of restructured loans,
if, among other things, the lenders voluntarily agree to drop the value of the principal to 90 percent of the home's current value.
Diana Olick, CNBC October 15 2008

It's like an avalanche.
A snowball of tumbling share prices began in Europe yesterday afternoon, picked up momentum on Wall Street - where the important S&P 500 index suffered its biggest loss in 21 years - and has been battering Asia overnight.
And that in spite of the £2 trillion pounds of taxpayers' precious money committed by governments to bank rescue plans all over the world.
What's more - and probably more worrying for the authorities - is that interest rates charged by banks for lending to each other for three months remain at disturbingly high levels
BBC's Robert Peston 16 Oct 08, 08:24 AM


När det svenska banksystemet var nära att bryta samman i början av 1990-talet togs många ekonomer på sängen. Få förstod vad som komma skulle.
Men turbulensen på finans- och valutamarknaderna framkallade den djupaste nedgången på 60 år och en kraftigt stigande arbetslöshet.
Peter Wolodarski, Signerat, DN 2008-10-16


Låneboomen förvärrades av ett beslut 2004 från den amerikanska finansinspektionen, SEC, att låta de fem investmentbankerna låna ut 40 gånger volymen av det egna kapitalet (mot tidigare 12).
Hans Bergström, kolumn DN 2008-10-09

UBS will raise 6bn Swiss francs ($5.3bn) from the Swiss government.
It will also be able to transfer up to $60bn of toxic assets to a fund supported by the Swiss central bank.
BBC 16 October 2008
- UBS balansomslutning är nästan fem gånger så stor som Schweiz BNP
DN/TT 16/10 2008

The US Treasury is being more generous to banks and shareholders than its UK counterpart
The preference shares being bought in the US pay a 5 per cent dividend, rising to 9 per cent after five years.
In the UK, these shares will pay at 12 per cent
Financial Times editorial October 14 2008

Informed observers suggest an additional $1,500bn in capital might be needed. So double this and assume it all comes from the state: it would still “only” be 10 per cent of US and European GDP
Martin Wolf, Financial Times October 14 2008

Dr. Doom: US Bailout Plan Will Probably Fail
"What I object to in all the bailout plans in the Western world is (that) they do not address the fundamental problem. And the fundamental problem is overleveraging,”
Marc Faber, editor & publisher of the Gloom, Boom and Doom Report, CNBC 14/10 2008

De fria sparbankerna bör inte rädda Swedbank igen
När bank- och finanskrisen skulle hanteras i början av 1990-talet var storstädernas sparbanker i konkursläge.
Ronny Svensson, DI Debatt 2008-10-14

Reverse Leverage of Mark-to-Market Wrecks Banks
John M. Berry Oct. 13 2008(Bloomberg

New Bailout Package Helps, But More May Be Needed
"This is second or third variation of what [Treasury Secretary Henry] Paulson's expected he'd have to do," says William Niskanan,
chairman emeritus of the Cato Institute and a former White House economist.
CNBC 14/10 2008

Is there time to avert a Minsky meltdown?
The point at which a Minsky moment becomes a Minsky meltdown has arrived.
Named after the economist, Hyman Minsky, this is the point where financial instability has become so acute that only an exceptional, immediate and global government attack on the causes of instability is likely to
avert a systemic banking failure, in which non-financial companies could rapidly fail too.
George Magnus, Financial Times, October 13 2008

The true balance sheet of US Investment banks
There are two sides of the balance sheet: the left side and the right side.
On the left side, there is nothing right.
And on the right side, there is nothing left.

Unknown originator, somewhere on the internet, october ? 2008


USAs helomvändning om banksocialisering
Den amerikanska regeringen, och alla andra, har gjort en häpnadsväckande helomvändning om sättet att rädda, eller snarare återuppväcka från det döda, det internationella finanssystemet.
Rolf Englund blog 2008-10-14


Det handlade inte om att banken skulle ha vägrat att ge afroamerikanska familjer lån för att köpa hus,
utan tvärtom att den beredvilligt gett dem för stora lån.

År 1976 var en husköpare i USA tvungen att lägga minst 20 procent av köpesumman i handpenning. År 2006 var genomsnittet 2 procent.
Håkan Forsell, DN Kultur, 23/8 2008

Now that governments across Europe have stepped in with bold plans to bail out their banking systems,
they are facing a new challenge: How to pay for it all.

Wall Street Journal October 14, 2008

The U.S. government is expected to take stakes in nine of the nation's top financial institutions
the government is set to buy preferred equity stakes in Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp. -- including the soon-to-be acquired Merrill Lynch -- Citigroup Inc., Wells Fargo & Co., Bank of New York Mellon and State Street Corp.
Wall Street Journal October 14, 2008

Krugman har fått Nobel-priset
Krugman published two seminal papers in 1979 and 1980 that made sense of the fact that Toyota sells cars in Germany and Mercedes-Benz sells cars in Japan.
Edward L. Glaeser, an economist at Harvard, New York Times October 13, 2008

Paul Krugman about the break-up of EMU

Rolf Englund:
The Nobel Price to Robert Lucas was a big mistake.

Mr. Paulson proposed buying $700 billion worth of “troubled assets” — toxic mortgage-related securities — from banks,
but he was never able to explain why this would resolve the crisis.
Paul Krugman, New York Times 9/10 2008


Den tyska regeringen godkände på måndagen ett räddningspaket för det finansiella systemet
på 500 miljarder euro, motsvarande 4.825 miljarder kronor.

Dagens Industri 2008-10-13

ECB policy rates are now at 3.75%, and it was not even the most important decision the ECB took yesterday.
That was to make unlimited funds available to the banking system at the new repo rate.
In terms of liquidity policy, this is the nuclear option.
The ECB is now providing banks with unlimited funds of 3.75%.

Illiquidity can no longer be a reason for a bank to get into difficulty. Whatever problems we are seeing now, they will be do to insolvency.
Eurointelligence 9.10.2008

I don't say this to pat myself on the back, but to offer specific examples that these problems were knowable well ahead of time.
So if the problems were knowable to so many people -- including me, a regular guy here in San Diego with no letters behind his name or anything -- then how is it that the people in charge of running the world's largest economy were absolutely blindsided by them?
Rich Toscano, Voice of San Diego, 12/10 2008
Rolf Englund: I could not agree more


Kreditfesten har gett rekordvinster och bankdirektörerna har belönats med enorma rikedomar.
Rikast av alla är SEB:s Annika Falkengren, 46.
Hur smart är det med bonusar som gör bankernas chefer rikare ju större risker vi som låntagare uppmuntras att ta?

Aftonbladet 12/10 2008


- Vi kan mycket väl vara väldigt nära botten och jag tror börsen står högre vid årsskiftet, säger topprankade fondförvaltaren Ann Grevelius, snart 42, ansvarig för svenska aktieförvaltningen på Handelsbanken Fonder
Privata Affärer Placeringsguiden, pressläggning 2-3 oktober 2008


Finankrisen – därför hände det, och så blir följderna för dig
SvD Näringslivs Lars-Georg Bergkvist och Leif Petersen förklarar finanskrisens bakgrund och följder.
Det är dags att putsa upp nygamla ord som kontantinsats och amortering.
SvD 10 oktober 2008
Mycket läsvärd artikel


Vårt lands stämma i världen, Carl Bildt, har i bland annat The Arab Times skrutit om sina insatser som regeringschef under den svenska krisen 1991–1994.
Eftersom krisen framför allt orsakades av Carl Bildts halsstarriga vägran att släppa den fasta växelkursen på kronan handlar det nu om att mordbrännaren stoltserar med sin skicklighet som chef för brandförsvaret.
Låg Bildt bakom beslutet att låta SEB växla in sina utlandslån den 19 november 1992
Riksdagen borde tillsätta en sanningskommission
Tomas Fischer, Fokus 10/10 2008

Some of the U.K.'s largest banks are expected to detail early Monday their participation in a bailout plan
The capital raising will be for four of the U.K.'s largest banks: Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC, Barclays PLC, HBOS PLC, and Lloyds TSB Group PLC.
Wall Street Journal 11/10 2008

One can sympathise with Berlin. But sharing debts with Italy and Spain was implicit when they agreed to launch the euro.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Daily Telegraph 08 October 2008
Very Important Article

No more bazookas. This time Hank and Ben need to roll out the tanks.
Recapitalization is needed. And the government needs to call the shots on this, whether banks like it or not.
Wall Street Journal, October 11, 2008

The world financial system is teetering on the "brink of systemic meltdown",
the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF)Dominique Strauss-Kahn has warned
BBC 12 October 2008

As John Maynard Keynes is alleged to have said: “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”
It took me a while – arguably, too long – to realise the full dangers.
Maybe it was errors at the US Treasury, particularly the decision to let Lehman fail, that triggered today’s panic.
Martin Wolf, FT, October 7 2008

Hank Paulson, the US Treasury secretary, was a man with a plan.
He argued passionately for his proposals for rescuing the US financial system.
Now he wants something different, closer to the UK plan for bank rescues.
Financial Times editorial, October 9 2008

Swedbank har lånat ut 721 miljoner kronor till isländska banker varav merparten, 560 Mkr, är osäkrade medel.
Men i dagsläget är ju de isländska bankerna rätt osäkra?
”Ja i dag är de ju det, det ser man ju överallt så i dagsläget är det helt annorlunda. Men marknaden är ju inte normal nu.”
DI 2008-10-07

Sedan toppen den 17 juli 2007, har Stockholmsbörsen nu fallit med exakt 50 procent.
Börsens sammanlagda marknadsvärde har sjunkit med ungefär 2 500 miljarder kr på 15 månader.
Affärsvärlden 8/10 2008


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Germany will guarantee all private savings accounts
Hypo Real Estate, Germany's second biggest commercial property lender, is in trouble after a 35bn euro rescue plan collapsed.
Ms Merkel had previously been strongly critical of the Irish and Greek governments' decisions to take independent action to protect all savings deposits.
BBC 5 October 2008

Has the international financial crisis exposed the cracks in the European Union's single market?
And are concerns over the economic national interest now over-riding the broader goal of European integration?
These are the questions being asked by those committed to an "ever closer union" referred to in the words of the EU's founding Treaty of Rome.
BBC 6 October 2008

Palmes vän i FNL-gerillan
"Olof Palme och madam Binh på socialdemokraternas partikongress 1972" (bild i artikeln)
Att madam Binh kallar FNL-rörelsen för Viet Cong kanske förvånar många gamla FNL-are
Fokus September 19-26 2008


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For most readers, the commercial paper market is something you don't think about.
But it is the lifeblood of business.
We have seen this market drop by almost 30% in a year and by 10% in just the last three weeks!
I simply cannot overstate how serious this is.
John Mauldin, The Curve in the Road, 3/10 2008

In the fall of 1992, the situation had almost spun out of control.
Five out of seven of Sweden’s largest banks, covering 90 percent of the market, were de facto insolvent

The US has the largest economy in the world and in its real economy the fundamentals are still very strong
Carl Bildt, Arab Times, September 27, 2008

Proposition 1991/92:168 om statligt engagemang för lösning av krisen i Sparbanken Första AB
På regeringens vägnar, Carl Bildt/Bo Lundgren
Utdrag ur protokoll vid regeringssammanträde den 9 april 1992
ett lån på 3,8 miljarder kronor till Sparbanksstiftelsen Första

Beginning in 1992, Congress pushed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to increase their purchases of mortgages going to low and moderate income borrowers.
Russel Roberts, Wall Street Journal 3/10 2008

The program to revive the operation of the banks through purchase of the toxic assets faces a sticky wicket.
If the government sets the prices too low, the banks will supply little of their assets;
If the Treasury sets its prices too high, its funds will buy only a portion of the toxic assets
Thus, it is not certain that such a program would work to clean out the toxic assets at all quickly. Subnormal operation of the banking industry might drag on for a few years.
Edmund Phelps Wall Street Journal 1/10 2008

It will pass, but it won't work
Jon Markman 2/10 2008

One European minister asked what would happen if the Treasury’s $700bn programme to buy up the banks’ toxic debts failed to crack the ice.
“We have nothing else,” Mr Paulson replied bluntly.
We must hope that by now Mr Paulson has a plan B – and, for that matter, a plan C.
Philip Stephens, FT October 2 2008

Timbro-evenemang
Löntagarfondernas nya kläder 3/10
Läs mer här och beundra och begrunda bilden
Det hade varit kul att vara med

Löntagarfonder

A real recession would quite likely end the current bear market in stocks,
just as in 1974, when a recession arrived to put an end to a savage bear market.
It was a period, in its combination of economic slowdown and post-bubble financial meltdown,
with a striking resemblance to the bear market that started in 2007
Jim Jubak CNBC 30/9 2008
Very Important article

Krisen är här - fastän recessionen ännu inte har börjat
Rolf Englund blog 30/9 2008

The $55 trillion question
The financial crisis has put a spotlight on the obscure world of credit default swaps
Will this be the next disaster?
CNN/Fortune SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

Central banks on Monday added $330 billion to the funds they can pump into money markets as more financial institutions ran into trouble in Europe and the U.S.
WSJ 29/9 2008

Once again, Anglo-American capitalism is a bad word and globalisation is next in line
The mantra that financial markets always allocate resources better was never true.
Financial markets suffer from very serious failures, chiefly information asymmetry.
Charles Wyplosz, FT, September 29 2008

Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad
Opposition to the proposal came from two different sources.
Willem Buiter, FT September 29, 2008

The most urgent issue is how to contain the destructive power of deleveraging.
Mortgages and mortgage-backed securities account for about $23,000bn of the $48,000bn of total debt owed
by the financial and non-financial private sectors.
George Magnus, FT, September 29 2008

Ireland was once dubbed the Celtic tiger economy and a model for the accession states of the European Union. However, with its construction and property markets stalling, last week it became the first country among the 15 members of the euro single currency to declare it was officially in recession.
With money markets frozen, Irish banks are seen as particularly dependent on interbank funding to finance loan expansion, which is seen as a vulnerability.
FT September 29 2008

Let me explain now in more detail why we are now back to the risk of
a total systemic financial meltdown…

This is not just a US financial crisis; it is a global financial crisis hitting institutions in the US, UK, Eurozone and other advanced economies (Iceland, Australia, New Zealand, Canada etc.).
Nouriel Roubini Sep 29, 2008

It’s 3 a.m., a few months into 2009, and the phone in the White House rings.
Several big hedge funds are about to fail, says the voice on the line,
and there’s likely to be chaos when the market opens.

Whom do you trust to take that call?
Paul Krugman, September 28, 2008</P>

US can ride out financial turbulence if it follows lessons of Swedish crunch
Carl Bildt, Arab Times 27/9 2008


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Ron Paul:
Bailout Will Destroy Dollar, World Economy

Monday, September 29, 2008

Jag kan mycket väl tänka mig att finanskrisen till dels är betingad av bristfällig tillsyn, illa hopkomna regelverk och dåliga belöningssystem i finanssektorn.
Det är inte omöjligt att krisen motiverar förändringar av de lagar och regler som styr finansmarknaden. Men... Hur stämmer Rothsteins modell med vad som hände i Sverige 1992?
PJ Anders Linder SvD blog 2008-09-27

Fortis
Mr Dierckx admitted that the ABN Amro deal, which was launched at the height of the credit boom last year, was a case of ”bad timing”.
FT September 29 2008

I en marknadsekonomi ska staten inte hålla banker under armarna. De som har tagit alltför stora risker och sedan drabbas av förluster får stå sitt kast.
Men det finns lägen där denna princip inte går att följa.
Johan Schück, DN 2008-09-28


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This is a difficult time to defend free markets. Nevertheless they must be defended,
It is hard to defend a system where top banking executives walk away with millions in compensation when their businesses are, in retrospect, fundamentally flawed. This looks like a reward for failure. We have witnessed two financial crises – the dotcom crash and the current banking disaster – in the first decade of this century. That is hardly a record which inspires confidence in the current efficiency of capital markets or their transparency.
Market freedom is not a “fundamentalist religion”. It is a mechanism, not an ideology.
The Financial Times is proud to defend it – even today.
Financial Times editorial September 25 2008 19:02

There is something called the TED spread,
which is the difference between three-month LIBOR and three-month US Treasury bills. The last time the TED spread was as high as it is now was right before the market crash of 1987.
Quite literally, the TED spread is screaming panic.
John Mauldin, Sep 27 2008

Regeringarna i Belgien, Nederländerna och Luxemburg går in med 11,2 miljarder euro (108,5 miljarder kronor) för att rädda den belgisk-holländska finanskoncernen Fortis, som delvis förstatligas.
DI/TT 2008-09-29 06:26


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Nyliberalerna tysta så det dånar
Det intellektuella civilkuraget hos den stora kader nyliberala ekonomer, som under årtionden hyllat USA:s ansvarslösa marknadsekonomi, imponerar inte.
Bo Rothstein, SvD Brännpunkt, 27 september 2008


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Keystone
The issue at stake this week is whether the banking arm of Fortis will face a run on its deposits in the same way that Northern Rock did in the autumn of 2007.
BBC 28 September 2008

If September 11, 2001 was the day that we had to reassess our ideas about America's role in world politics,
September 15, 2008, the day Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, may well be remembered as the day we had to reassess our ideas about America's role in the world economy.
Anne Applebaum, Daily Telegraph, 28/9 2008

At first, nobody could quite believe Mr Paulson was incompetent.
Was it really possible that the Treasury Secretary had no idea of what to do with this unprecedented financial firepower?
Anatole Kaletsky, The Times, September 25, 2008

Finansmarknadsminster Mats Odell vill ännu inte stänga Sverige för blankning.
Han varnar dock dem som spekulerar för att attackera Swedbank.
”Swedbank står starkt. Det kan komma att stå dem som blankar väldigt dyrt”, säger Mats Odell och förklarar att svenska banker står ovanligt starka.
Dagens Industri 2008-09-26 09:19

Så här ett kvarts sekel senare är det svårt att riktigt ta in hur extrema idéer som LO och socialdemokratin lade sig till med i kölvattnet av 68.
Förslagen till fondsystem känns som hämtade ur en överhettad satir om DDR-Sverige, men allting står där svart på vitt för den som vill veta.
Under en tid var det så här som arbetarrörelsen i Sverige ville ha det.
P J Anders Linder, Krönika SvD 28 september 2008
Med kommentar av Rolf Englund


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The money markets on the verge of a nervous breakdown
The money market, not the stock market, is where this financial crisis is playing out first and foremost. On this market, banks lend each others funds for short periods of time with no collateral. A favourite way to measure distress in the way money is the difference between the interest rate on 3-month Treasury – which are considered safe – and 3-month Libor. This is known as the TED spread. If you consider your counterparty bank safe, you would expect to receive only a slightly higher interest rate on 3 Libor than you would on 3 month treasuries. But if you expect to receive more than 300 basis points, as banks do now, then you doubt the financial viability of your counterparty.
Yesterday, the spread briefly peaked at 333bp, which must be an all-time record.
eurointelligence 26.09.2008

The real cost of home ownership depends on real house prices, interest rates and other housing costs (such as depreciation, repairs, insurance and taxes). But, above all, it also depends on expected changes in house prices.
The more house prices are expected to rise, the cheaper the effective purchase price also becomes. This last point is central.
If people's expectations of future price increases are affected by their recent experience prices will tend to overshoot fundamentals:
this is just how bubbles form.

Martin Wolf, FT 24/11 2006
Very Important Article

Maybe we can let Wall Street implode and Main Street would escape largely unscathed.
But that’s not a chance we want to take.

Paul Krugman New York Times September 25, 2008

Om inte bostadspriserna i USA hade börjat sjunka hade inte det inte blivit kris och dagens räddningsoperationer hade varit överflödiga.
En av orsakerna till svängningen i bostadspriserna var den låga räntan.
Danne Nordling SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

Enligt demokraterna rådde kaos i överläggningarna sedan det framkommit vid mötet i Vita huset
att John McCain ställt sig bakom en alternativ räddningsplan som markant skilde sig från den som diskuterats.

Han sade också att han visste inför mötet att det inte fanns någon färdig uppgörelse i kongressen, trots uttalanden från Dodd om motsatsen.
DN 2008-09-26 06:20


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Europe's vulnerable banks
Are European banks insulated from the panic in America?
The Economist print Sep 25th 2008

Washington Mutual
US officials assumed control of WaMu after its shares lost nearly all their value
This after all is an industry-leading bank with over $320 billion in assets.
September 25 2008 22:33

Over the past five years, stock buy-backs have increased at a remarkable rate.
Combined, the 500 companies in the S&P 500 index in January 2008 repurchased $120bn in 2003 and $597bn in 2007;
in 2007 repurchases represented 90 per cent of their net income, while dividends were another 39 per cent.
William Lazonick, Financial Times September 25 2008

The banking system needs another $500 billion to survive beyond the $700 billion rescue plan being contemplated by Congress, said Pimco founder Bill Gross.
CNBC.com 25 Sep 2008

Ireland leads euroland into recession as property crashes
Ireland has become the first country in the eurozone to slide into recession as the torrid housing boom of recent years turns into a deep slump.
Construction was 21pc of GDP at the peak last year, which is even worse than Spain (18pc) and far worse than America (11pc) at the height of the bubble,
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard Daily Telegraph 25 Sep 2008

At the end of 2007, no less than $9.4 trillion in dollar-denominated securities were sitting in the vaults of foreign investors.
United States has run heavy and persistent current account deficits — $6.7 trillion in total since 1982
James Grant, New York Times September 23, 2008

Swedbank


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"Det var en väldigt stökig dag. Ingen har velat hålla i Swedbankobligationer,
så handeln med dessa har pajat ihop"

DI 2008-09-24


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It was two years ago that Nicholas Taleb wrote those words in his book The Black Swan:
The increased concentration among banks seems to have the effect of making financial crisis less likely, but when they happen they are more global in scale and hit us very hard. We have moved from a diversified ecology of small banks, with varied lending policies, to a more homogeneous framework of firms that all resemble one another. True, we now have fewer failures, but when they occur ….I shiver at the thought.
James Quinn, September 22, 2008

The crucial problem on this side of the Atlantic is that the largest European banks have become not only too big to fail, but also too big to be saved.
The total liabilities of Deutsche Bank (leverage ratio over 50!) amount to about €2,000bn (more than Fannie Mae) or more than 80 per cent of the gross domestic product of Germany.
This is simply too much for the Bundesbank or even the German state, given that the German budget is bound by the rules of the European Union’s stability pact
Daniel Gros and Stefano Micossi, Financial Times, September 23 2008

For years, liberal Democrats in Congress and some Republicans pushed for banks and other institutions to make home loans to unqualified borrowers, and suddenly we find many of these people cannot repay their loans.
A Chicago "public interest" lawyer named Barack Obama was active in this movement.
Richard W. Rahn, Washington Post, September 23, 2008

The fundamental problem with the Paulson scheme is that it is neither a necessary nor an efficient solution.
It is not necessary, because the Federal Reserve is able to manage illiquidity through its many lender-of-last resort operations.
It is not efficient, because it can only deal with insolvency by buying bad assets at far above their true value, thereby guaranteeing big losses for taxpayers and providing an open-ended bail-out to the most irresponsible investors.
Martin Wolf, Financial Times, September 23 2008

DEBUNKING THE PAULSON PLAN
The good news is that the bail-out of Wall Street will probably save us from an imminent collapse of the financial system.
But it raises disturbing questions.
Wolfgang Munchau 23.09.2008

The time between Roubini making a dire forecast and it coming to pass has just collapsed.
From yesterday's Financial Times: The next stage will be a run on thousands of highly leveraged hedge funds
In today's Independent: Hedge funds could have an unprecedented level of cash pulled out by investors this quarter
Nakedcapitalism September 23, 2008

Stopping a Financial Crisis, the Swedish Way
A vain effort to defend Sweden’s currency, the krona, caused overnight interest rates to spike at one point to 500 percent.
The Swedish state would guarantee all bank deposits and creditors of the nation’s 114 banks
Carter Dougherty, New York Times/CNBC September 22, 2008

How we have learned the limits to free markets – the hard way
The real economy is engineering plus social organisation. Finance is applied mathematics, mixed with human nature.
Roger Bootle, Daily Telegraph, 21 Sep 2008

The shadow banking system is unravelling
Nouriel Roubini, FT September 21 2008

Lehman bondholders could lose $110bn
FT September 22 2008

Money market funds in the US suffered an estimated $197bn of net outflows last week as confidence in their safe-haven status weakened after one fund “broke the buck” and others closed.
The outflows mark a new and potentially dangerous phase for the $3,400bn money market fund industry .
Financil Times September 22 2008

Over the past few weeks three experiences have helped clear my mind on this crisis.
First, I reread Hyman Minsky’s masterpiece, Stabilizing an Unstable Economy.
Martin Wolf, Financial Times, September 16 2008

A systemic crisis demands systemic solutions
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Managing director of IMF, FT September 22 2008

Capitalism in convulsion:
Toxic assets head towards the public balance sheet
John Plender, September 19 2008

"Who is responsible for this disaster?
May those who are responsible be punished and held accountable"

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, CNBC/Reuters 23 Sep 2008

This is one of the most extraordinary periods in U.S. financial history.
We had crossed over from "too big to fail" to "too big to bail out."
Bill Fleckenstein, 22/9 2008

An almighty crash has been averted, very narrowly.
By taking the colossal wreckage of the credit bubble onto its own books in a $700bn taxpayer sink, Washington has forestalled a run on the world banking system, and may hopefully have saved the viable core of modern capitalism.
Europe has embedded paralysis in its treaty law. Maastricht prohibits a Keynesian blitz. Budget deficits above 3pc of GDP are not allowed until an EU country is already in dire straits, and even then approval requires a committee vote by 27 states. So Ireland, Italy and France must now tighten fiscal policy into the downturn.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Daily Telegraph 21/9 2008

End of the Wall Street investment bank
Times Online September 22, 2008

In a week, the financial crisis of 2008 changed everything
— and now comes the cleanup: if the administration's $700 billion Wall Street bailout plan is approved by Congress, the United States will see changes to its political economy that were unimaginable a week ago.
Time Magazine Sep. 22, 2008

The crisis began with losses in the $1.3 trillion market for "subprime" mortgages, many of which were "securitized" -- bundled into bonds and sold to investors.
With all U.S. stocks and bonds worth about $50 trillion in 2007, the losses should have been manageable. They weren't, because no one knew how large losses might become or which institutions held the suspect subprime securities.
Moreover, many financial institutions were thinly capitalized. They depended on borrowed funds; losses could wipe out their modest capital.
Robert J. Samuelson, September 22, 2008

Cash for Trash
If the government is going to provide capital to financial firms, it should get what people who provide capital are entitled to — a share in ownership, so that all the gains if the rescue plan works don’t go to the people who made the mess in the first place.
Paul Krugman September 21, 2008

Många har förundrats över över hur vårdslös utlåning till låginkomsthushåll i USA kan dra in världsekonomin i en allvarlig kris.
Johan Schück, DN 2008-09-19


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Questions abound over a $700 billion rescue plan for Wall Street
Mr Paulson’s plan is stunning in its brevity (two-and-a-half pages) and audacity.
It would authorise him to purchase any “residential or commercial mortgages and any securities, obligations, or other instruments that are based on or related to such mortgages,” implying the right to take over derivative positions.
Economist.com Sep 22nd 2008

Extraordinary emergency actions by the Federal Reserve and the Treasury to date, while necessary, are insufficient to resolve the crisis. We should move decisively to create a new, temporary resolution mechanism. There are precedents -- such as the Resolution Trust Corporation of the late 1980s and early 1990s, as well as the Home Owners Loan Corporation of the 1930s.
Brady, U.S. Treasury secretary from 1988-1993, Mr. Ludwig U.S. comptroller of the currency from 1993 to 1998, Volcker chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1979-1987
Wall Street Journal SEPTEMBER 17, 2008

The next administration - whether it's McCain or Obama - will be forced to restore the Resolution Trust Corp., which was created in 1989 to dispose of assets of insolvent savings and loan banks.
The effects on the dollar, however, will be catastrophic.
Mike Whitney 6 June 2008

Hitler och kronkursförsvaret
I finansbranschen slås de ut som tagit störst risker på en marknad som fullständigt tappat kontrollen över sin egen riskhantering.
Girigheten har fått härja fritt på närmast regellösa marknader.
Ragnar Roos, signerat, DN 2008-09-19

Belåningsgraden på den svenska bostadsmarknaden ligger i dagsläget i snitt på 70 procent av bostadens värde.
Men det finns samtidigt en del hushåll, särskilt med yngre, som har 100 procent i belåningsgrad.

Cecilia Hermansson, SvD Näringsliv/TT 17 september 2008

"Modern history’s greatest regulatory failure"
These are companies that re­finance themselves in the capital markets every day. They depend on the confidence of lenders.
But, if that disappears, their solvency is threatened. This is where we are now.
This has put the Fed and the US Treasury into a nearly impossible position
Roger Altman, Financial Times, September 17 2008 18:52

John McCain: (not Naomi Klein)
"Wall Street has betrayed us.
They've broken the social contract between capitalism and the average citizen"

John McCain, September 16, 2008

The end of American capitalism as we knew it
There is a long-standing argument that "there is no real case for private ownership of deposit-taking banking institutions
Willem Buiter, Financial Times September 17, 2008

1997-2008 har huspriserna stigit mer i Sverige än i USA
The Economist print Sept 13 2008

U.S. will take 80% stake in nation's largest insurer to prevent global financial chaos.
CNNMoney September 17, 2008

The standard definition of recession needs rethinking.
To the average person, a large rise in unemployment means a recession.
By contrast, the economists’ rule that a recession is defined by two consecutive quarters of falling GDP is silly.
The Economist print Sep 11th 2008

Recession 2.0 should go like this:
A recession occurs when the growth of the GDP is smaller than the rise in productivity
Rolf Englund 17/9 2008

Shares of American International Group fell sharply after reports that the insurer had turned to the Federal Reserve for $40 billion in bridge financing to ward off a liquidity crisis and ratings downgrades.
CNBC 15 Sep 2008

Stefan Ingves:
– När det här är över skulle det inte förvåna mig om krisen som Sverige upplevde i början av 1990-talet, visar sig vara värre än det som vi idag ser i USA.
I det svenska fallet krympte ekonomin under tre år i rad och det var den största krisen som vi hade haft sedan 1930-talet.

Ekot 16/9 2008


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The U.S. financial system was badly shaken Sunday by the failure of Lehman Brothers , the surprise takeover of Merrill Lynch and big asset sales by major insurer American International Group.
"The U.S. financial system is finding the tectonic plates underneath its foundation are shifting like they have never shifted before,"
said Peter Kenny, managing director at Knight Equity Markets in Jersey City, New Jersey.
CNBC 14 Sep 2008

"There's no question that this is in the process of outstripping anything I've seen, and it is still not resolved"
Greenspan said

Värsta krisen kan vara över för finanssektorn
Lehman Brothers gör en brakförlust - även om det kommer fler obehagliga överraskningar, vilket det troligen gör, kan det värsta ändå vara förbi.
Johan Schück 2008-09-11

"Det är uppenbart att man blåst faran över för bankkrisen alldeles för tidigt",
säger Michael Grahn, makro- och räntestrateg på Danske Bank.
DI 2008-09-15 09:46

Lehman Brothers
One Wall Street executive involved in the meetings put it this way:
"I'm thinking logically; if they do nothing it's Armageddon. That means they do a deal.
It will be announced at 6 p.m. (ET) Sunday."
CNBC 13/9 2008

Barclays has pulled out of talks to buy most of Lehman Brothers, the BBC has learned.
BBC Sunday, 14 September 2008 19:35 UK

It is important to understand clearly the concept of systemic risk in the midst of an intense credit crisis that coincides with the onset of a global recession.
As Chairman Bernanke clearly suggested, the U.S. credit crisis revealed glaring inadequacies in the regulatory and supervisory framework of the United States
John H. Makin, American Enterprise Institute, September 5, 2008

Barclays was last night considering a direct plea from Hank Paulson, the US Treasury Secretary, to assemble a cut-price rescue bid for Lehman Brothers
Daily Telegraph 14/9 2008

Peter Lagerlöf, analyschef Carnegie, ligger på högsta plats på listan över analytiker.
enligt Johan Scück, DN ekonomi 2 september 2008
Peter Lagerlöf, DN Ekonomi 2007-08-13: 1. Vi hade när året började en prognos om att börsen skulle gå upp med 15 procent och det håller vi fast vid.
2. Verkstadsbolagen ser definitivt köpvärda ut igen.
Peter Lagerlöf, DN Ekonomi 2007-08-13


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Lehman Brothers plunged 45% - its shares ended down $6.36 to $7.79
The fall sparked a wider sell-off on Wall Street, Dow Jones falling 280 points
This removed almost all of the gains it had enjoyed on Monday.
BBC, Tuesday, 9 September 2008

Fannie and Freddie
That is capitalism at its worst:
it means shareholders and executives reap the profits,
but the taxpayer bears the losses.

The Economist, editorial, August 28th 2008

Brett prisfall väntar
"Den här gången är det inte lyxobjekten som faller först.
Ett vanligt hus på fem miljoner kronor är mycket svårare att sälja idag"
säger Carl-Henrik Ageman, vice vd Bjurfors, DN Ekonomi 6 september 2008

Fannie and Freddie
The Washington Post said the firms would be put under a legal status known as "conservatorship" which would greatly reduce the value of the two companies' common stock.
BBC 6/9 2008

Planning to announce the decision as early as Sunday, before the Asian markets reopen
Senior officials from the Bush administration and the Federal Reserve on Friday called in top executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
and told them that the government was preparing to place the two companies under federal control
New York Times, September 5 2008

Alternativet då var att slappa växelkursen, alltså devalvera. Efteråt sa många att det borde vi ha gjort redan då, men jag hörde till dem som var övertygad om att vi gjorde rätt som höll fast vid kronkursen.
Mona Sahlin

USA gör världshistoriens största bank-bail-out
Rolf Englund blog 2008-09-06

The Great Game again?
Georgien hävdar att Ryssland försöker slå ut den oljeledning som löper från de kaukasiska oljefälten via Tbilisi till Medelhavet.
Bra karta

Rescue plan near for Fannie and Freddie
Share prices for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac declined 30.3 per cent and 26.6 per cent respectively
reflecting investor concerns that the rescue plan would wipe out holders of equity in the groups
Financial Times, September 5 2008

Banksocialisering i USA och roffarkapitalism i Ryssland och Kina
- Så det kan bli
Rolf Englund blog 22/8 2008

Nu är det dags att gå in på börsen igen.
Sedan toppen i mitten av juli förrra året har Stockholmsbörsen sjunkit med drygt 30 procent och sedan årsskiftet är nedgången omkring 20 procent.
Viktor Munkhammar, Dagens Industri, 2008-09-05


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Den 18 november 1992 åt jag middag med Jan Stenbeck och några vänner i Gröna huset.
"I morgon håller Riksbanken stängt och kronan devalveras", sa Jan. Men Jan fick bara delvis rätt.
Var man kund i SE-banken kunde man fortfarande komma ur sina utlandslån. Strax före klockan 14.00 växlades Luxonens jumbolån. Sedan stängde Riksbanken
Tomas Fischer, Fokus, 5 september 2008

En australiensisk expert på klimatberäkningar har efter att ha jobbat med frågan i 6 år kommit fram till att bevisen för växthusteorin inte håller.
Det centrala beviset existerar inte ens. Allt det övriga är modeller och teoretiska beräkningar.
Danne Nordling 31/8 2008


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De svenska AP-fonderna har över 10 miljarder kronor placerade i de konkurshotade amerikanska bostadsjättarna Fannie Mae och Freddie Mac. Allvarligast är läget för Tredje AP-fonden, vars hela innehav utgörs av efterställda fordringar, så kallad subordinated debt.
Gunnar Örn, DI 2008-09-04


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Lars H. Thunell
IFC Executive Vice President & CEO

Most recently, he was the Chief Executive Officer of SEB
In the 1990s, Mr. Thunell served as the Chief Executive Officer of Trygg-Hansa
and as Deputy Chief Executive Officer of Nordbanken.
He was also President and Chief Executive Officer of Securum, an asset management company established by the Swedish government

Little attention has been paid to what a recession and accompanying spike in unemployment could do to a housing market already stricken by faltering sales, sinking prices, high interest rates and soaring foreclosures.
Rates may be historically low but the spread is unusually high.
CNBC 03 Sep 2008

Nice name dropping
"Here’s a link to a paper I presented at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City’s symposium on
“Maintaining Stability in a Changing Financial System”, at Jackson Hole"
Willem Buiter, Financial Times, August 25, 2008

Swiss Re's London Headquarters
30 St Mary Axe is a landmark 40-storey office building
by architects Foster and Partners.
30 St Mary Axe is London's first environmentally sustainable tall building.
RE: Marvellous

It is not just about putting $25 to $50 billion into Fannie and Freddie (assuming that would be enough).
If that's all it was, just issue preferred shares and wipe out the current shareholders
But. What do you do with the current preferred shares?
A significant portion is held by banks in their capital base.

John Mauldin, August 30, 2008

Jackson Hole 2008
Papers presented at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City's economic policy symposium,
"Maintaining Stability in a Changing Financial System,"

Chancellor Darling warns that the economic times faced by Britain and the rest of the world "are arguably the worst they've been in 60 years".
The Guardian, August 30, 2008

For decades, people had continued to pay down mortgages until their last cent was spent.
Now, increasing numbers were giving up their homes even as they continued to service other debts.
The practice has been given a name in the industry – “jingle mail”
Financial Times, August 17, 2008

Metan är en kraftfull växthusgas - drygt tjugo gånger kraftigare än koldioxid.
Hittills har Sibiriens metan legat infruset under permafrosten och i det kalla kustvattnet i flera tusen år. Men...
Karin Bojs, DN 2008-08-29


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The perpetrator wasn't an asteroid or comet, like the impact that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago
MCCLATCHY, August 27, 2008

Spännande läsa Johan Schück
Ibland har han rätt, ibland har han fel
Rolf Englund 29/8 2008


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Martin Feldstein förklarar varför de amerikanska villägarna är ett hot mot världsekonomin
Rolf Englund blog 27/8 2008


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Nu vaknar Riksbanken
"Bankernas utlåning har höjt bopriserna"
Rolf Englund blog 27/8 2008

Billionaires Warren Buffett and Pete Peterson
The disaster they warn of could be bigger than any we've ever seen - bigger than an iceberg, bigger even than the current mortgage crisis.
CNN 25/8 2008

The risk of a downward spiral of house prices is the primary danger facing the American economy.
Because of the structure of securitised mortgage finance, this risk has the potential to cause a global financial crisis.
Both of these problems will remain until a new policy brings stability to house prices.
Martin Feldstein, Financial Times, August 26, 2008
Very Important Article

I Danmark tvingas nu Nationalbanken, alltså landets riksbank, att ingripa för att hindra Roskilde Bank att gå omkull.
Ekot 25/8 2008


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Will America follow Japan into a decade of stagnation?
The Economist print August 21st 2008

“The topic du jour is Fannie and Freddie.
Clearly, the market is looking for a solution that is permanent, clear and definitive. That dwarfs everything.”
Financial Times, August 24 2008

Could the credit crunch destroy the Eurozone?
The historical precedent is not the Great Crash of 1929.
Rather, it is the Japanese property bubble of 1989 and the deflation and long-term stagnation which followed.
George Irvin, EU Observer, 31/7 2008

Det finns en optimism i den amerikanska kulturen, en framtidstro som gör att man har större benägenhet att skuldsätta sig än européer.
Olle Wästbergs nyhetsbrev, augusti 2008

Snittpriset på ett småhus i Sverige var 679.000 kronor 1996, nu är det 1.782.000 kronor.
Samtidigt som priserna stigit har det också varit möjligt att låna nästan hela summan.
Maria Crofts, DN Ekonomi 2008-08-22


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Banksocialisering i USA och roffarkapitalism i Ryssland och Kina
- Så det kan bli
Rolf Englund blog 22/8 2008


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Fannie and Freddie
Given the inevitable losses on the Alt-A/subprime portion of their portfolio, the capital to be made up by the government (i.e., the taxpayers), must equal $147 billion.
Don A. Rich, Ludwig von Mises Institute, 22/8 2008
Highly recommended article with nice chart

The return of the state:
How government is back at the heart of economic life
John Plender, Financial Times, August 21 2008

Fannie, Freddie $223 Billion Debt Rollover Problem
It is a near certainty taxpayers will be bailing out Fannie and Freddie.
The only questions now are about the size and exact nature of that bailout.
Warren Buffett: "The game is over"
Mish August 20, 2008

"Sedan i fjol har vår syn på världsekonomin förändrats markant.
Det är tydligt att vi inte har sett slutet på historien om kreditkrisen", säger Jacob Wallenberg.
DI 2008-08-22


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Banks becoming addicted to the liquidity window in Frankfurt
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Daily Telegraph, 21/8 2008

Fannie Mae fell 27% to $4.40, the lowest since 1988.
Freddie Mac crashed by nearly 22% to $3.25, their lowest since 1990.
BBC 20/8 2008

What is a bundle of mortgages worth when nobody is willing to bid on them at auction?
With American banks already in trouble,
an Australian bank made matters worse—by telling the truth!
Robert Morley, theTrumpet.com, August 12, 2008

The US money supply has experienced the sharpest contraction in modern history
"Monthly data for July show that the broad money growth has almost collapsed," said Gabriel Stein, the group's leading monetary economist.
Mish/Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, August 19, 2008

Freddie Mac och Fannie Mae är varken riktigt privata eller riktigt statliga.
Vid årsskiftet hade de belånat sitt "kärnkapital" 65 gånger om
Gunnar Örn DI 20/8 2008


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Rogoff varnar för fler bankkonkurser
"USA har inte klarat krisen.
Jag tror att finanskrisen kanske har nått halvvägs."

DI 2008-08-19


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The global financial crisis is set to get worse, with a large US bank likely to collapse in the next few months, a former IMF chief economist has warned.
BBC 19/8 2008

How U.S. banks sold home equity loans
International Herald Tribune, August 15, 2008

Det ryktas, obekräftat hittills, att planer finns att i östra östra Europa, av vissa tidigare delar av den tidigare Sovjetiska Unionen, däribland Georgien, Stalins födelseland, skapa en ny östeuropeisk union Eastern European Union - EEU.
Rolf Englund blog 2008-08-19


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AIG offered investors an 8.25% yield for $3.25 billion of 10-year notes, and
Citi offered 6.5% for $3 billion of five-year notes.

CNN 18/8 2008

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were down 19% and 18%, respectively.
A Barron's article this weekend suggested the takeover is inevitable and would wipe out existing shareholders; even holders of the companies' $19 billion in subordinated debt would suffer losses. MSN 18/8 2008
Well, it was even worse
Fannie stock falls 22% and Freddie 25% to near two-decade lows.
CNN 18/8 2008

How to solve the financial crisis?
Let me tell you a little secret, folks.
Play for time, pray for markets to turn.

Allan Sloan, senior editor CNN, August 18, 2008

No economy can live beyond its means in perpetuity. Yet....the US thought it was different.
America’s current account deficit surged from 1.5% of GDP in 1995 to 6% in 2006.
Stephen Roach August 2008

Riksbanken försvarar sig mot de generande anklagelserna att ha förväxlat KPI-ökning med inflation.
Ett antal bankekonomer rycker ut till stöd. Men den sakliga grunden saknas.
Danne Nordling 14/8 2008

US Consumer prices soared 5.6% from a year ago in July, the biggest year-over-year rise in 17 years.
Bank of America economist Lynn Reaser notes that prices were sharply higher across the board.
CNN 14/8 2008

I nuläget är det åtskilliga europeiska länder, bland dem Sverige, där bostadspriserna är mer övervärderade än de amerikanska, enligt IMF.
Johan Schück, DN, 2008-08-15

Dr. Doom, about Nouriel Roubini
New York Times August 15, 2008

Man skall inte ha för stor tilltro till riksbanksledningar.
Ännu ej refuserat manus, sänt till tidskrift i Sverige
Rolf Englund 2008-08-09

“inflationary expectations”
William White, until recently economic adviser to the Bank for International Settlements
has resisted heroically the temptation to say: “I told you so.”
Samuel Brittan, Financial Times, August 14 2008

Den internationella finansiella krisen är en kombination av två fenomen som påminner om tidigare perioder:
1970-talets inflationskris och skuldkrisen vid 1990-talets inledning.
Varken regeringar, tillsynsmyndigheter eller centralbanker har slagit till bromsarna i tid.
Urban Bäckström, DN Debatt 15/8 2008

Ingemar Bengtsson redogör helt korrekt i sitt inlägg på SvD Brännpunkt igår för skillnaden mellan inflation och förändringar i relativpriser. Men...
Stefan Ingves, riksbankchef, Irma Rosenberg, förste vice riksbankschef
SvD Brännpunkt 14/8 2008

Where Are the Marchers for Peace?
I am also wondering, will we hear of passionate peace activists
Martin Helme, The Brussels Journal 2008-08-10

Var är de "mänskliga sköldarna" nu?
SvD ledarblog 2008-08-14

I hesitate to point this out, but...
chart of the Dow from 1896 to 2007
Extremely long sideways periods, lasting 18 years (1906-1923),
26 years (1929-1954) and 17 years (1966-1982)
Gary D. Halbert, at John Mauldin, Aug 12 2008
Very nice clickable chart

So-called Baby Boomers are those apprx. 78 million Americans
born between 1946 and 1964, most all of whom will retire between now and 2029.
Various studies conclude that most Baby Boomers have not saved nearly enough for their retirement.
Gary D. Halbert, at John Mauldin, Aug 12 2008

Nearly 25% of all homes sold nationwide fetched less than sellers originally paid,
CNNMoney August 13, 2008

Prime mortgages are starting to default
at disturbingly high rates
CNNMoney August 12, 2008

Bloomberg is reporting Banks' Subprime Losses Top $500 Billion on Writedowns.
Bloomberg (and others) keep referring to this as if it was a "subprime" problem.
The reality is this was an unsustainable worldwide credit boom of epic proportion.
Mish August 12 2008 with nice table

Världskriget har startat
Femte augusti 2008, kommer gå till historien som datumet då IBM tillsammans med Red Hat, Novell och Ubuntu förklarade krig mot Microsoft
Niklas Andersson 6 augusti 2008 00:46

A year since the credit crunch burst upon an unsuspecting world, the big questions remain unanswered.
Where are we now? Is it nearly over? And has understanding finally caught up with reality?
Roger Bootle, Daily Telegraph 10/8 2008

Riksbanken bör skyndsamt ompröva sin räntepolitik och
noga analysera skillnaden mellan inflation och prisökningar.
Den akademiska diskussionen om inflationsbegreppet måste återupplivas
Ingemar Bengtsson, SvD Brännpunkt 13 augusti 2008

A housing slump helped cause the credit crisis.
But its effect on spending may have been exaggerated
The Economist print Aug 7th 2008

Crash Proof:
How to Profit From the Coming Economic Collapse

Peter Schiff

We are all Keynesians again
As the crunch grinds past its first anniversary, central banks’ credibility is still at risk
The Economist print Aug 7th 2008

A lifelong libertarian, Alan Greenspan does not ordinarily advocate giving the government more power.
But he does so in a new epilogue to the paperback edition of his memoir,
parts of which were made available to The Economist.
The Economist print edition Aug 7th 2008

8 who saw the crisis coming... and 8 who didn't
One year after the credit crunch began, Fortune looks back at who saw trouble ahead, and who just ended up in trouble.
CNN/Fortune August 2008

The /banking/ insolvency crisis will come to an end only as home prices in the US begin to stabilise
Home prices will stabilise only when the absorption of the huge excess of single-family vacant homes is much further advanced
Alan Greenspan, Financial Times, August 4 2008

Credit crunch a year on: The losers
However you look at them, the figures remain startling.
BBC 3 August 2008

US Savings rate
A long wave of credit stimulation has been allowed to obscure the underlying problem of capital accumulation in the United States.
We are paying a price, but not solving the problem.
American Thinker 4/8 2008

The Fed's rate dilemma
Interest rates likely on hold for a while as worries about economic weakness and inflation leave central bank with few good options.
CNNMoney.com August 1, 2008

Only luck can save America’s economy
What more can be done? The short answer is nothing.
The policy options have narrowed almost to zero.
Clive Crook, Financial Times August 3 2008

Ett år har gått sedan den globala kreditkrisen blossade upp, snabbt och häftigt.
SvD Ekonomi

It is almost exactly a year since the European Central Bank was forced to inject €95bn into the eurozone banking system
Financial Times

Let's see. It's Friday, what bank(s) is the FDIC taking over this weekend?
According to this report in CNN/Money, it's Florida's First Priority Bank
Tim Iacono 1/8 2008

AMF Pension sänkte sin återbäringsränta från 4 till 1 procent.
Det betyder att återbäringsräntan ligger under den ränta på 2,5 procent som bolaget garanterar spararna.
DN 1/8 2008

On the one hand, the BIS called for world interest rates to rise
in order to deal with a "clear and present threat" from global inflation while,
on the other hand, it warned that the global economy may be close to a "tipping point" into a "slowdown
severe enough to transform the current period of rising inflation into a period of falling prices."
John H. Makin, August 1, 2008

– Det är både så att ekonomin dämpas och att vi har ett pris- och lönestegringstryck i ekonomin,
och då gäller det att balansera med den avvägningen så att vi både förstärker produktionskapaciteten och stärker upp efterfrågan något, säger Anders Borg.
Ekot 2 augusti 2008

The credit crisis and how to survive it
"When Markets Collide: Investment Strategies for the Age of Global Economic Change" By Mohamed El-Erian
Review by John Authers, Financial Times July 27 2008

Of course we need a functioning banking system.
But what matters at a world level and for countries is that total nominal demand should be rising fast enough to support a sustainable rate of real growth but not so fast as to generate runaway inflation
Samuel Brittan, Financial Times, July 31 2008

Deutsche Bank gör ytterligare en nedskrivning på 3,6 miljarder dollar, motsvarande drygt 21 miljarder kronor
Totalt har banken tvingats skriva ned sina tillgångar med 11 miljarder dollar.
DI 31/7 2008

How the banks can win back confidence
Josef Ackermann (Deutsche Bank), Financial Times July 30 2008

The Grand Summary:
Our Empire of Debt Is Collapsing
Charles Hugh Smith, July 28, 2008

Björn Davegårdh
"Det känns som ett klassiskt köpläge."
DI 2008-07-31

"We interrupt regular programming to announce that the United States of America has defaulted …"
reductions in US real wages and living standards on a scale that those who have not experienced it first hand cannot understand
Satyajit Das Eurointelligence 24.07.2008

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
July 17th 2008, The Economist print edition
Outstanding article

In October 2003, Treasury Secretary John Snow told Congress ``we need to be on guard'' against the ``perception'' that the U.S. government stood behind the stocks and bonds of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
This week his successor, Henry Paulson, has seen a plan to make such a guarantee explicit to the brink of passage, getting a presidential veto threat withdrawn
July 25 (Bloomberg)

Australia faces worse crisis than America
Gabriel Stein said Australia could prove vulnerable
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Daily Telegraph 29/7 2008

Merrill Lynch plans to raise capital through an $8.5 billion share offering.
When Temasek, owned by Singapore's government, agreed to invest in Merrill this past December and March at $48 a share, it secured a price-reset clause.
The agreement stated that if Merrill sold new shares within one year at a price less than $48, then Merrill would need to pay Temasek the difference in either cash or shares.
Wall Street Journal July 30, 2008

The world cannot grow its way out of this slowdown
The main macroeconomic challenges facing the world today are an excess demand for commodities and an excess supply of financial services
Need to introduce more banking discipline
Kenneth Rogoff, Financial Times July 29 2008

Don't look now, but the end of the denial phase of the credit crisis may be in sight.
The bad news is now that investors can see the picture a little more clearly, it's pretty ugly.
Merrill Lynch sold risky mortgage debt for 22 cents on the dollar
CNN/Fortune July 29, 2008

Merrill Lynch tvingas till ytterligare nedskrivningar på 5,7 miljarder dollar
Minskar sin exponering mot kreditmarknaden genom att sälja tillgångar, ABS och CDO:s, för 30,6 miljarder dollar.
Prislappen motsvarar ungefär 20 procent av tillgångarnas ursprungliga värde
DI 2008-07-29

America's house price time bomb
Some American home-owners are taking radical action;
they are choosing to walk away from homes and their mortgages.

BBC, 29 July 2008
Highly Recommended

Roubini: "You could have most of the US banking system wiped out, so this is a total disaster."
BBC, 29 July 2008
Highly Recommended

What failed this time were markets.
The lenders, the credit-rating firms, the investors
ROGER LOWENSTEIN, New York Times July 27, 2008

Och bankinspektionerna, vill man tillägga
Rolf Englund

The housing correction - and related credit crunch - appears to be at or near its low point in America
My view has been - and remains - that this episode is likely to be remembered as one of those extremes of panic or euphoria in financial markets turn out to be simply wrong.
Anatole Kaletsky, The Times July 28, 2008

Banks with federally insured deposits, which are limited in the risks they’re allowed to take and the amount of leverage they can take on — have been pushed aside by unregulated financial players.
We were assured by the likes of Alan Greenspan that this was no problem: the market would enforce disciplined risk-taking
Paul Krugman 28/7 2008

Nu är det värsta över
Gissa om jag får äta upp den här rubriken om jag får fel.
Gunnar Örn, DI 2007-08-24

The Homeownership Obsession
As a society, we overinvest in real estate. We build (and buy) too many extra-big homes and strive to make almost everyone into a buyer.
Robert J. Samuelson, July 26 2008

The prospect for the economy isn’t V-shaped, it’s L-ish
When will it all end?
The answer is, probably not until 2010 or later. Barack Obama, take notice.
PAUL KRUGMAN, NYT July 18, 2008

The Paradox of Deleveraging
Paul McCulley, July 2008

Homes purchased in 2004 and beyond are now at risk
some 25 million or so

Bill Gross, August 2008

The proposed bail-out of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac entails the socialisation of risk
– with all the long-term adverse implications for moral hazard –

from an administration supposedly committed to free-market principles.
Joseph Stiglitz, Financial Times July 24 2008

You Know The Banking System Is Unsound When...
Mish, July 23rd, 2008

Ford posts $8.7 billion loss
Volvo förlorade 120 miljoner före skatt andra kvartalet

Ben S. Bernanke and Henry Paulson are under pressure to embrace the big-government policies of America in the 1930s, or Sweden in the 1990s, to contain the conflagration engulfing the U.S. housing and financial markets.
Among the ideas: Using taxpayer money to shore up the capital of loss-ridden Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
Bloomberg 21/7 2008

Cherished myths fall victim to economic reality
"Financial markets are efficient"
"Individuals are supremely well-informed creatures" /Rational expectations
Paul De Grauwe, Financial Times July 22 2008

1970-talet var ett stort undantag.
Klimax var de bisarra förslagen om löntagarfonder, då LO/SAP tillsammans kom med förslag som skulle ha förvandlat Sverige till fackföreningsstyrd planekonomi
PJ Anders Linder, SvD 13/7 2008

Illa vore det annars
Most banks are safe
... so is the FDIC
CNNMoney July 21, 2008

Video
Paulson: Banking system is safe
The Treasury Secretary tells CNN's Wolf Blitzer that 99% of the banks in the U.S. have enough capital to meet their needs.
July 21, 2008

Mona Sahlin i Almedalen 2008
Lyfte fram sin roll i den ekonomiska krisuppgörelsen 1992.
Medan Fredrik Reinfeldt slogs om ordförandeposten i Muf, lekte hon med de stora grabbarna
Lotta Fogde, Kolumn DN 16/7 2008

It is now almost a year since the US subprime crisis went global.
It has, in all likelihood, not even passed the end of its beginning.
The creditworthiness of the US government cannot be taken for granted.

Martin Wolf, Financial Times, July 15 2008

Nouriel Roubini predicts the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression and
the worst U.S. Recession in the last few decades.

July 15, 2008

Börsbotten kan vara nådd
Sedan börsraset inleddes för ett år sedan har börsen backat med 39 procent.
Även tisdagen var mörk. Men botten kan snart vara nådd — åtminstone tillfälligt, spår analytiker.
DN/TT 2008-07-15 15:30

SEC Panic - Shorting Curbs Placed on GSE Stocks /government sponsored enterprises/
The panic at the Fed, the SEC, and the Treasury department continues. In an emergency action the SEC Curbs Shorting of GSE Stocks, Considers Limits for Wider Market.
Ackman Shorts Fannie, Freddie
Mish 15/7 2008

Fannie Mae is an organisation the US government created, but could not control.
It has always been difficult for Europeans to understand why Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac exist in the heartland of capitalism.
During the New Deal, measures to enable low-income households to buy their homes seemed a proper government objective.
In more recent times private institutions have been all too willing to provide such mortgages.
John Kay, Financial Times, July 15 2008

The government keeps a private list of financial institutions at risk. Two years ago, there were 50 on the list, today it stands at 90. The government now acknowledges that IndyMac wasn't even on the list.
Oh dear.
Tim Iacono July 14, 2008

Gatorna är klädda med såväl Frankrikes som Europeiska Unionens flagga.
Men det jag kommer att titta speciellt på är vårt Gripen-flygplan i parad över Paris.
Det är det ungerska flygvapnet som deltar med ett av sina Gripen-flygplan.
Jag kommer att applådera.
Carl Bildt 14/7 2008

Treasury Acts to Save Mortgage Giants
The Bush administration on Sunday asked Congress to approve a sweeping rescue package that would give officials the power to inject billions of federal dollars into the beleaguered companies through investments and loans.
New York Times 14 July 2008

US taxpayers are about to find out what their long-standing and (strictly speaking) non-existent guarantee of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will cost them.
One way to think of it is this: take the US national debt of roughly $9,000bn and add $5,000bn.
Not bad for an obligation still officially denied.
Clive Crook. FT July 13 2008

Fannie, Freddie and You
This implicit guarantee means that profits are privatized but losses are socialized. If Fannie and Freddie do well, their stockholders reap the benefits, but if things go badly, Washington picks up the tab.
PAUL KRUGMAN, NYT July 14, 2008

By Bush administration standards, Henry Paulson, the Treasury secretary, is a good guy.
He isn’t conspicuously incompetent; and he isn’t trying to mislead us into war, justify torture or protect corrupt contractors.
Paul Krugman, NYT, December 10, 2007

The dollar - FEER of falling
The purchasing-power parity, or PPP—is $1.16, according to the OECD.
Yet a euro buys as much as $1.55
The Economist print June 19th 2008

Former U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow:
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have relied on leverage to fund their businesses in the same fashion as a hedge fund
The government-chartered companies, which grew to account for almost half of the $12 trillion in U.S. mortgages, were able to borrow at cheap rates because of an implicit federal guarantee
July 11 2008 Bloomberg

The California-based IndyMac Bank, has collapsed
Federal regulators seized the bank's assets
It is the second-largest financial institution to fail in US history
BBC, July 12 2008

Med grönt ljus från socialdemokraterna för alliansens missriktade nedmontering av den statliga fastighetsskatten finns inga utsikter till att Sverige ska få en vettig beskattning av fastigheter
DN-ledare 12/7 2008

USA:s resolution om riktade sanktioner mot den zimbabwiska ledningen föll sedan de båda stormakterna Ryssland och Kina motsatt sig den
tillsammans med Sydafrika, Libyen och Vietnam.

Vem vann Vietnam-kriget?

The biggest political story of 2008 is getting little coverage. It involves the collapse of assumptions that have dominated our economic debate for three decades.
Since the Reagan years, free-market cliches have passed for sophisticated economic analysis.
But in the current crisis, these ideas are falling, one by one

E. J. Dionne Jr. Washington Post, July 11, 2008

"This is the third time in 100 years that support for taken-for-granted economic ideas has crumbled.
The Great Depression discredited the radical laissez-faire doctrines of the Coolidge era.
Stagflation in the 1970s and early '80s undermined New Deal ideas and called forth a rebirth of radical free-market notions.
What's becoming the Panic of 2008 will mean an end to the latest Capital Rules era.
"

U.S. trade deficit narrowed in May to $59.8 billion
Imports rose 0.3 percent to $217.3 billion
Exports increased 0.9 percent to $157.5 billion

This is part 13 in our Great Depression series:
Bernanke is a student of the Great Depression and much of his belief is that the Federal Reserve was a main (if not primary) cause of exacerbating the problems at that time.
Dr. Housing Bubble 9/7 2008

The word began spreading across Wall Street trading desks on Monday morning:
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the giant companies at the heart of the nation's housing market, might be in trouble.
New York Times, July 11, 2008

It is unclear if current shareholders would see their holdings wiped out - leading to the pre-market sell-off.
Immediately after the market open shares of Fannie and Freddie were both off more 45% from their already battered close on Thursday.
In the first four trading days of the week, the shares of Fannie have lost 30% of their value, while Freddie shares have tumbled 45%.
For the year, Fannie is down 67% and Freddie 77% through Thursday's close.
CNNMoney July 11, 2008

The rapid sell-off of shares of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac came after comments from a former central banker that they may not be solvent
New York Times, July 11, 2008

Matthew Simmons
The high priest of “peak oil†thinks world oil output can now only decline
July 10th 2008, From The Economist print edition

De nordiska bankerna har tillsammans en utlåning på 450 miljarder kronor i Baltikum.
Störst utlåning har Swedbank och SEB med 182 miljarder kronor respektive 139 miljarder kronor
DN 2008-07-03

A Black Swan Swims Across the Pond
July 2 2008
Black Swan
Black swan theory

EIA skrev ner sin prognos för världsproduktionen av olja 2030, från 118 till 100 mb/d.
Den för tidigt publicerade uppgiften finns i Annual Energy Outlook 2008 (Early Release) vars egentliga publikationsdatum är i december 2008.
Daniel Berg, ORDFRONT MAGASIN NR 7-8/2008

Caveat Emptor
Remember, Cassandra was right!
Differently this time?
The Kirk Report, June 18, 2008

General Motors shares have fallen to their lowest level in more than 53 years
Merrill Lynch warned that GM needs to raise funds and that bankruptcy was "not impossible"
BBC July 3, 2008

Goldman Sachs sågar Swedbank
Den nya rekommendationen är sälj från tidigare neutral
Goldman räknar med att Swedbanks vinst kommer att falla med tanke på kommande kreditförluster i Baltikum.
DI 2008-07-04

Samtal om löntagarfonder (1982).
I denna liberala klassiker ställer Englund -- numera VD, chefsideolog och webmaster för tankesmedjan Rolf Englund Internetional Communications IntCom -- ett antal ledande förespråkare för fondsocialism mot väggen. Med skarpa frågor lyckas Englund blottlägga intervjuobjektens totalitära ambitioner.
Skriften... placerar därmed Timbro i en stolt borgerlig tradition med rötter ända tillbaka till Borggårdskrisen 1914 och Kosackvalet 1928.
En trött advokats politiska betraktelser.

Kurt G. Rantzén

Just as with mortgage debt, credit card debt is put into pools that are then resold to investment houses, other banks and institutional investors.
About 45 percent of the nation's $900-plus billion in credit card debt has been packaged into these pools, and so many companies, not just a few, are at risk of being forced out of business by credit card debt write-offs.
Allen L Roland's Radio Weblog June 30, 2008

The American Constitution is missing a word. There was a word left out that our Founders failed to recognize as important. The word is "Bailout."
There is nothing in that document that allows the government to bailout someone whose house burned down, or a car company, or someone with medical problems, or someone who spent too much on a house they could not afford, or a bank that made bad loans.
Clay Barham, Populist Party June 30 2008

That sound you hear is the popping of a financial bubble in housing, the economy and the market.
And you can trace it all to Alan Greenspan's Federal Reserve.
Bill Fleckenstein, 30/6 2008

It needs to be recognised that in the months ahead there is the real possibility that significant financial institutions will encounter not just liquidity but solvency problems as the economy deteriorates and further writedowns prove necessary.
It is quite possible that we are now at the most dangerous moment since the American financial crisis began last August.
Lawrence Summers, FT, June 29 2008

Bank for International Settlements annual report
"How," asks the report, "could a huge shadow banking system emerge without provoking clear statements of official concern?"
How, indeed?

How big are the risks now? The answer is: very large.
As I argued in a speech at a BIS conference last week...
Martin Wolf, Financial Times, July 1 2008

Let me offer a hypothetical series of events which could alter the current environment
and maybe even bring back the specter of deflation.

John Mauldin, June 27 2008
RE: Extraordinary good

"Börsen på träsknivå"
DI 28 juni 2008

If there were a Central Bank of the World its monetary policy committee would glance at today's inflation rates and expectations of future inflation and then raise interest rates.
There is no such bank, but there is something close: the US Federal Reserve, the monetary policy of which is mirrored by many countries in the Middle East and Asia.
low Fed interest rates are contributing to global inflation.
The Fed sets interest rates for Asian countries because, explicitly or not, they manage their exchange rates against the dollar.
If US interest rates are low, countries targeting the dollar are obliged to follow, because otherwise investors will sell dollars to buy their currency.
Financial Times editorial, June 25 2008

Removal of the famous "Greenspan put"
On Monday, June 9, Bernanke gave a pathbreaking speech entitled "Outstanding Issues in the Analysis of Inflation"
In two sentences, he contributed to a sharp, fifty-basis-point rise in two-year bond yields.
With those two sentences, Bernanke embarked on a path that may lead to whereby the Fed avoids policy measures that could cause systemic risk in financial markets.
John H. Makin, June 26, 2008

There are so many shoes dropping now that you could have the whole of Imelda Marcos's wardrobe falling off now.
The biggest lending has been by the Austrian banks into areas like Poland, Hungary, and this is where we see the contagion risk coming back into developed Europe.
In the Baltic States, however, it's the Swedish.
Gillian Tett, Financial Times February 3 2008

Trots den höga inflationen skall ska Estlands valuta fortsätta att vara bunden till euron.
- Den fasta växelkursen är en av hörnstenarna i vår ekonomi
Andrus Säälik, 32, chefsanalytiker Estlands finansdepartement, DN Ekonomi 26/6 2008

Barclays warns of a financial storm as Federal Reserve's credibility crumbles
US central bank accused of unleashing an inflation shogav have limited themselves to recent history
Naked Capitalism, April 20, 2008

Citigroup cutting 9,000 jobs - $12bn of write-downs for sub-prime mortgages and other risky assets.
BBC 18/4 2008

Policy makers have slowly recognised the Minsky Moment followed by the unfolding Reverse Minsky Journey.
But I want to emphasise "slowly,"
Part of the reason is human nature: to acknowledge a Reverse Minsky Journey, it is first necessary to acknowledge a preceding Forward Minsky Journey
Paul McCulley, April 2008

Att hon nu ser sig tvingad att lämna uppdraget som Stockholms ledande politiker är nedslående.
Det säger något om det politiska livets stundtals brutala krav, vilka i oproportionerligt hög grad slår mot kvinnor
DN ledare 17/4 2008

Kvinnor är känsligare för alkohol än män, det vet de flesta.
Men vad det innebär, mer än att kvinnor inte kan dricka lika mycket som män under en kväll, är inte lika välkänt.
Systembolaget

Fondförmögenheten i Sverige har under en tioårsperiod ökat från 460 till 1 660 miljarder kronor.
Nysparandet under perioden stod för 680 miljarder kronor medan värdeökningen stod för cirka 520 miljarder kronor.
e24, 2008-04-17

"Jag är ledsen - men priset blev för högt"
DN 18/4 2008

U.S. Housing Starts Slide to Lowest Level in 17 Years

European Inflation at 16-Year High

Dollarn i 5,89 kr
(klockan 14:43) 2008-04-16

Most baby boomers have their money in their houses
Accordingly, the only way they will be able to retire in the style they expect is to sell their houses to one another.
Examples of Stein's Law: "If something cannot go on forever, it will stop".
Dr. Woody Brock, at John Mauldin, 14/4 2008

The Inflation Solution to the Housing Mess
John Makin, Wall Street Journal April 14, 2008

Stabiliseringspolitiken sköts i huvudsak av Riksbanken via prisstabilitetsmålet.
Finanspolitiken bidrar till makroekonomisk stabilitet genom de automatiska stabilisatorerna och genom att skapa trovärdighet för att de offentliga finanserna är långsiktigt hållbara.
Prop. 2007/08:100, sidan 69

Wachovia joins the list of chronic anemics along with Citigroup (C), Washington Mutual (WM), Merrill Lynch (MER) and Countrywide Financial (CFC).
That price represents a discount of more than 15 per cent to Wachovia's share price
Mish April 14, 2008

The collapse of the housing bubble in the United States is mutating into a global phenomenon,
with real estate prices swooning from the Irish countryside and the Spanish coast to Baltic seaports
New York Times 14/4 2008

På det hela taget går det bra för Sverige.
Förra året tog Sverige ännu ett kliv uppåt i OECD:s så kallade välståndsliga: från fjortonde till nionde plats, enligt preliminära siffror.
Sverige är inte bara rikt. Sverige är ett av de rikaste länderna i världen.
Men hur rika är svenskarna?
Per T Ohlsson, Sydsvenskan 13 april 2008

Kommentar av Rolf Englund:
1. Man måste skilja på - inte blanda samman - förmögenhet och likviditet.
2. Hushållen bedömer själv vilken likviditet man anser sig behöva.
3. Man måste även bedöma pensionerna - har hushållen pensionsförsäkringar eller bankmedel?
4. Jag har lärt mig att internatinella jämförelser är mycket svåra att göra
- om man vill förstå och inte bara göra propagandistiska jämförelser, för att driva krav på skattesänkningar, t ex.
5. Om man inte kan driva kravet på lägre skatter med motiveringen att de höga skatterna gör att vi släpar efter så kan man tydligen försöka driva skattesänkningskravet med motiveringen att svenskarna är så fattiga.

Trillion Dollar Meltdown:
Easy Money, High Rollers, and the Great Credit Crash, by Charles R Morris
thought-provoking for experts and a readable primer for the layperson
Review by Gillian Tett, FT, September 23 2007

Back in April 1999, didn't the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, the Chairman of the SEC, The Secretary of the Treasury and the Chairperson of the CFTC jointly prepare a 140 page report on the Lessons of LTCM in which they stated that:
The principal policy issue arising out of the events...is how to constrain excessive leverage...
Mark Wenzel, April 13, 2008

De fyra största svenska bankerna har idag mer än hälften av sina sammanlagda tillgångar i utlandet,
framför allt i övriga Norden, men även i Tyskland, Polen och de baltiska länderna. Nästan lika stor andel av deras sammanlagda rörelseresultat härstammar från utlandet.
För Nordea-koncernen är denna andel inte mindre än tre fjärdedelar.


Har vi det regelverk som krävs för att hantera eventuella framtida problem? Svaret på den frågan är nog tyvärr nej, åtminstone i dagsläget.
Riksbankschef Stefan Ingves, Nationalekonomiska föreningen, 2008-03-13

Rädda Stadsbiblioteket
Gunnar Asplunds bibliotek i Stockholm är känt över världen. Det måste skyddas mot politiker som tror att huvudstaden är i akut behov av ny spektakulär arkitektur.
DN huvudledare 14/4 2008
Bild här och här

En av våra mest kända och arkitektoniskt intressanta byggnader ska få en systerbyggnad. Det är glädjande att detta väcker debatt
Madeleine Sjöstedt, kultur- och idrottsborgarråd

Stadsbibliotekstävlingen

Carl Bildt försöker få ära för det misslyckade kronkursförsvaret
Rolf Englund blog 12/4 2008

What Exactly Is The G7 plan?
Mish, April 12, 2008

Misslyckat försök göra en pudel
The world's leading banks – represented by the Institute of International Finance – concurred with a conclusion long ago reached by the rest of the world:
they screwed up, the credit crisis is largely their fault, and everybody else is suffering for their errors.
The admission may not be enough to prevent a dangerous backlash.
Financial Times editorial April 11 2008

Reuters reports that consumer sentiment has plunged to a new 26-year low.
Let's see... That would be 1982...
Wasn't that the beginning of the last bull market in stocks?

Tim Iacono 11/4 2008

Inget samtida fenomen är så genomgripande och så avgörande för vår tid i historien som internets uppkomst.
Allt förändras, och der börjar nu
(Fokus 10/2008)

"on the web since 1995"
Rolf Englund

Internationella media tycks nu fyllas av mer eller mindre beundrande beskrivningar av den svenska modellen.
Nu är det hanteringen av finanskrisen.
att det nu internationellt ses som en stor framgång finns ju anledning att notera.

Carl Bildt, wordpress blog 11/4 2008

Different this time?
Even as other observers fretted that a market bubble was about to burst, Irving Fisher confidently predicted that stocks had reached "a permanently high plateau."
Too bad it was October 1929.
Matthew McClearn, April 14, 2008

Vänstern har fallit ihop intellektuellt och moraliskt.
Nu när 68-vänstern skall fira 40 år analyserar några brittiska debattörer, Lennart Berntson och Per Bauhn orsakerna till kollapsen.
Relativism, postmodernism och känslomässig subjektivism samt en moralisk sammanblandning av rättvisa och jämlikhet pekas ut som några av grunderna.
Danne Nordling 10/4 2008

Islamister är utopister.
Den vackra utopin gör stora offer försvarbara.
Europas Förenta Stater är en annan och näraliggande farlig utopi.
Kunde vi rulla tillbaka Sovjetunionen skall vi väl kunna rulla tillbaka Europeiska Unionen.
Rolf Englund Barometerns website 7/6 2005

Nice chart of UK Houseprices 1984-2008
Daily Telegraph 10/4 2008

1968 - Tänk om dom fått igenom sina förslag
Rolf Englund blog 2008-04-10

Policymakers are studying how Sweden managed to rescue four of its biggest banks when its own credit boom turned to bust in the early 1990s.
House prices had slumped, the currency was out of control, and unemployment and bankruptcies were rising rapidly.
The state aid was skilfully targeted, so none of the cash went to the bank's shareholders
BBC 9/4 2008

Comment by Rolf Englund
In fact, the Swedish government bailed out the shareholders of Nordbanken.
Read more about in swedish at
www.internetional.se/re95nb.htm

Mr. Volcker noted that when "concerns about recession are rife," the central bank will be tempted to "subordinate the fundamental need to maintain a reliable currency" to the impulse to shore up a flagging economy.
The danger is that you lose both battles, as the U.S. did in the 1970s, and wind up with stagflation.
Wall Street Journal 9/4 2008

US trade deficit rose in February to $62.3 billion
Exports rose 2% to $151.4 billion
Imports rose 3% to $213.7 billion
CNN April 10, 2008

Why Greenspan does not bear most of the blame
The US is in no way exceptional for the level of residential investment.
Somewhat to my surprise, the share of residential investment in UK gross domestic product has been much the same as in the US.
The outliers here are Ireland and Spain.
Martin Wolf FT April 8 2008

Comment by Rolf Englund:
Another outstanding article by Martin Wolf.
Perhaps this will count as the ultimate article in this field.
Read it

Riksbanken får beröm för att dom ljög
The International Monetary Fund last week gave central banks some wicked advice.
They should no longer ignore residential property prices when setting interest rates.
At the same time, the IMF recommends central banks should retain their inflation-targeting frameworks.
It all sounds very plausible. Unfortunately the two goals are inconsistent.
Wolfgang Münchau Financial Times April 6 2008

Case for an "L" Shaped Recession
Now that it's clear we are in a recession, the question has arisen as to what shape it will take:
"V", "U", "L", or "W".

Mish April 08, 2008

Bear Stearns' bailout has echoes of 1907 panic
In my opinion, the private credit markets have forfeited their privileged right to operate relatively autonomously because of incompetence, excessive greed, and in minor instances, fraudulent activities.
Bill Gross, April 2008

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned that potential losses from the credit crunch
will reach $945bn and could be even higher.

"losses are spreading" - "collective failure"
BBC 8/4 2008

I am puzzled why the remarkably similar housing bubbles that emerged in more than two dozen countries between 2001 and 2006 are not seen to have a common cause.
The dramatic fall in real long term interest rates statistically explains, and is the most likely major cause of, real estate capitalization rates that declined and converged across the globe. By 2006, long term interest rates for all developed and major developing economies declined to single digits, I believe for the first time ever.
Alan Greenspan, Financial Times April 6, 2008

De kallades "nyttiga idioter" av Leninisterna.
På DN debatt skriver i denna anda ett antal historiker och andra samhällsforskare i protest mot den pågående informationskampanjen om kommunismens brott mot mänskligheten som Forum för levande historia just nu genomför.
Emil Uddhammar, Professor i statskunskap, Smålandsposten 4/4 2008

Subprime like The Debt Crisis of the 80's
Argentina, Brazil and all the rest put the US banking system in jeopardy of grinding to a halt.
The amount of the loans exceeded the required capitalization of the US banks.
John Mauldin April 5 2008

Many today are complaining about Alan Greenspan's monetary stewardship - "serial bubble-blower" is the most polite phrase that I have heard.
But would the world economy really be better off today under an alternative monetary policy that kept unemployment in America at an average rate of 7% rather than 5%?
Would it really be better off today if some $300 billion per year of US demand for the manufactures of Europe, Asia, and Latin America had simply gone missing?
Brad DeLong April 05, 2008

The evidence is overwhelming that most Americans have unconscious biases both against blacks and against women in executive roles.
NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, New York Times, April 6, 2008

The great inflation cover-up
Fortune 3/4 2008

For the past 25 years or so the financial authorities and institutions they regulate have been guided by market fundamentalism:
All the innovations – risk management, trading techniques, the alphabet soup of derivatives and synthetic financial instruments – were based on that belief.
George Soros FT 2/4 2008

"Immigration increases the size of the economy."
This is true, but irrelevant.

What matters is its impact on the welfare of the pre-existing population. What is remarkable is that there is next to no good argument or evidence to suggest that immigration on the current scale does raise that welfare to any significant degree.
Martin Wolf FT 3/4 2008

The Treasury chief's plan wouldn't fix the problems underlying today's financial crisis.
But what else did you expect from a package of "reforms" fronted by a Treasury secretary who was formerly the CEO of investment bank Goldman Sachs
Jim Jubak 4/4 2008

The rescue of Bear Stearns was
a paradigm-changing event.

Paul Krugman, NYT March 31, 2008

The day $2 billion walked out the door
Inside a bank panic: Customers deserting, investors fleeing, billions in losses.
Survivors of a run at E*Trade tell how they fought to hang on.
CNN 4/4 2008

Banks are overwhelmed by the U.S. housing crisis
The number of borrowers at least 90 days late on their home loans rose to 3.6 percent
April 4 2008 Bloomberg

One way of measuring how perilously close the U.S. financial system came to melting down in mid-March 2008
is to look at how low the rate on one-month Treasury bills fell at the depths of the crisis.
That number is 12 basis points. 0.12%.
Michael Lewitt, at John Mauldin, 2008-03-31

UBS seeks $15.1B in new capital
Switzerland's largest bank, expects writedowns of $19 billion
just as Deutsche Bank AG, Germany's largest bank, announced similar writedowns of about $4 billion.
CNN 1/4 2008

Ett smaklöst aprilskämt?
Morgan Stanley: nedskrivningarna inom banksektorn kommer att uppgå till 4.485 miljarder kronor under 2008.
Bloomberg/Direkt/DI 2008-04-01

För dem som har haft en övertro på marknadens självreglerande krafter är förstås den internationella kreditkrisen en allvarlig missräkning.
Ragnar Roos, DNs ledarsida, 30/3 2008

Killing Fields' journalist dies
A Cambodian-born US journalist whose enslavement and escape from the Khmer Rouge became the subject of the famous film, The Killing Fields, has died at the age of 65.
BBC 30/3 2008

Birgitta Dahl
Vi ler, ställer inga obekväma frågor och ger henne ett Sommarprogram om året.
Johan Hakelius, ledarsidan SvD augusti 1997

Without help from the Fed, Bear's shareholders might well have received nothing at all, and yet the state is stuck at the back of the queue—guaranteeing a $29 billion slug of Bear's worst assets.
The Economist print, March 27th 2008

Government sponsored enterprises
Capital infusions to date fall far short of prospective losses. Without new capital, the financial sector will operate with too much risk and leverage or will put the economy at risk by restricting the flow of credit.
Lawrence Summers, FT March 31, 2008

Two weeks ago, the world financial system hung by a thread as a battle raged among corporate leaders, government officials, portfolio managers and independent traders to control its destiny.
Half wanted to pull it down and spill the globe into economic Armageddon for personal profit, while the other half fought to stave them off.
Jon Markman, CNBC 27/3 2008

Sverige genomgick under 1900-talet två stora bankkriser.
USA gör klokt i att studera det svenska exemplet
Dagens Nyheter huvudledare 2008-03-25

The Financial Services Authority, the City watchdog, has admitted to a catalogue of errors in its handling of the Northern Rock crisis,
which saw the first run on a British bank in more than a century.
Daily Telegraph 26/03/2008

Jim Grant of Grant's Interest Rate Observer on Bloomberg
"What manner of incompetence - both at the public policy level and at the so-called financial professional level - led to this mess?"
And the people who are paying are the savers, among others.
March 26, 2008

US house prices have fallen at the sharpest rate in more than 20 years, and American consumers are now at their most pessimistic since Richard Nixon was in the White House
Fed stopped derivatives implosion
Daily Telegraph 25/03/2008

Fed bailout of Bear Stearns
Remember Friday March 14 2008
it was the day the dream of global free-market capitalism died.
Martin Wolf, Financial Times, March 26 2008

Home prices post another record decline
The residential real estate market continues to deteriorate in 2008, with 20 key markets reporting a 10.7% decline.
CNNMoney March 25, 2008

Själv har jag sedan i maj 2006 i det här nyhetsbrevet argumenterat för att det mesta talar för att dollarkursen befinner sig i en nedåtgående trend.
Olle Wästbergs nyhetsbrev, mars 2008

Den isländska centralbanken höjer sin styrränta med 1,25 procentenheter till 15 procent.
DI 2008-03-25
Iceland shows cracks as the krona crashes
Daily Telegraph 23/03/2008

Volvo PV räknar med ytterligare ett tufft år i USA med sjunkande försäljning och
miljardförluster på grund av svag dollar och höga materialpriser.
DI 2008-03-25

"Tack 1968"
Det är lika rätt att se 1968 som ett liberalt märkesår som att förknippa det med all sköns tillfälliga bokstavskombinationer.
DN huvudledare 23/3 2008
Med länkar

"Ett förenat Europa med en regering, ett parlament, en beskattning, ett försvar och medlemsländerna som delstater, som DN har uttalat sig för
är ett nytt exempel på samma farliga, romantiska och felaktiga utopism som 1968.
Kommentar av Rolf Englund 23/3 2008

I dagsläget har Fed inte mycket att välja på. Men att ständigt skyndsamt agera räddare i nöden, när marknadens aktörer misskött sig eller blåst upp bubblor som spricker, leder också fel. Det är lika illa som att vara curlingförälder.
Vems är det direkta felet till att kreditmarknaden krisar?
DN huvudledare 17/3 2008

Contrary to popular belief, the stock market crash of 1929 wasn't the defining moment of the Great Depression.
What turned an ordinary recession into a civilization-threatening slump was the wave of bank runs that swept across America in 1930 and 1931.
This banking crisis of the 1930s showed that unregulated, unsupervised financial markets can all too easily suffer catastrophic failure.
As the decades passed, however, that lesson was forgotten — and now we're relearning it, the hard way.
To grasp the problem, you need to understand what banks do.
Paul Krugman, New York Times 21/3 2008

Fed's $200 billion loan scheme won't work
The giveaway strategy -- creating a huge pool of cash to loan to securities dealers, with risky mortgage-backed debt as collateral -- is little but stalling for time.
Bill Fleckenstein, 17/3 2008

It is déjà vu for those who remember previous emerging market crises:
imploding balance sheets, a bank run, disorderly falls in the currency Yet there is a huge difference: this is happening in the US
Mohamed El-Erian, FT March 18 2008

The Federal Reserve, struggling to prevent a meltdown in financial markets, cut the rate on direct loans to banks and became lender of last resort to the biggest dealers in U.S. government bonds.
March 17 2008(Bloomberg)

How the Fed avoided the Northern Rock trap
John Gapper FT 17/3 2008

The current financial crisis in the US is likely to be judged in retrospect as the most wrenching since the end of the second world war.
It will end eventually when home prices stabilise and with them the value of equity in homes supporting troubled mortgage securities.
Alan Greenspan, Financial Times, March 17 2008

U.S. Trade Deficit:
If something cannot go on forever it will stop
Rolf Englund May 21,2001

En dollar kostar nu mindre än 6 kronor,
DI 17/3 2008

Free fall
There seems to be no floor for the dollar at the moment.
Mar 16th 2008 Economist.com

In May 2006, Alan Greenspan, the former Chairman of the Fed, noted:
"The CDS is probably the most important instrument in finance. . What CDS (credit default swaps) did is lay-off all the risk of highly leveraged institutions - and that's what banks are, highly leveraged - on stable American and international institutions."
Satyajit Das, March 04, 2008

New figures coming out of the US economy confirms that in almost every respect it is doing significantly better than expected.
It is impressive.
Carl Bildt blog 6/12 2005

Yields on five-year Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities fell below zero
Yields on the securities, known as TIPS, dropped to minus 0.036 percent
nakedcapitalism March 4, 2008

Ben Bernanke in dilemma over bank bail-out
Irwin Stelzer, Sunday Times March 16, 2008

The credit world is aligning itself into political factions
On one side are the trader-fundamentalists.
As far as they are concerned, the only way to deal with the excesses of the credit markets is to take the write-offs
Opposed to them are the would-be managers of systemic risk.
They believe that the aggressive application of the mark-to-market rule would result in another Great Depression, only bigger.
John Dizard, Financial Times March 4 2008

Baby boomers and the post-boomer generations are facing a retirement crisis way beyond the worries about a collapse of Social Security
Jim Jubak March 4 2008

"jingle mail"
More people will post the keys to their lender and walk away.
The Economist print - Searching for Plan B - 28/2 2008

Not even Alan Greenspan
One great puzzle about the recent housing bubble is why even most experts didn't recognize the bubble as it was forming.
Robert J. Shiller, New York Times March 2, 2008
Comment by webmaster Rolf Englund:
But many did actually warn many years ago

A key cause of the present slowdown and potential recession was not a tightening of monetary policy but the bursting of the house-price bubble
The Fed therefore will not be able to end the recession as it did previous ones by turning off a tight monetary policy.
Martin Feldstein, Wall Street Journal, February 20, 2008

You Walk Away is an innovative new service that provides homeowners with a $1,000 information kit on how to walk away from a losing real estate bet.

That's good 'ol American ingenuity and free enterprise for 'ya.
Tim Iacono 3/3 2008

Ben Bernanke: "We have a problem"
'We have a problem, which is that the spreads between the Treasury rates and lending rates are widening, and our policy is essentially, in some cases just offsetting the widening of the spreads, which are associated with signs of illiquidity."
Eurointelligence/calculatedrisk blog 29/2 2008

Det unika Sverige är inte längre så unikt.
Sverige är ett EU-land bland andra
Så skönt att slippa systemskiftet
PJ Anders Linder Krönika SvD ledarsida 2/3 2008

When Texas and Ohio vote in Tuesday's Democratic primaries, they may bring Hillary Clinton's campaign for the presidency to an end.
for most of the time she has veered from one false personality to another, often during the course of a single debate or interview. One moment she would be acting tough, the next warm; now aloof, now approachable; now a fun person, fond of a joke (that was the worst), now stern and serious. In every moment of repose came that scary rictus smile, to emphasise the lack of authenticity and remind one irresistibly of Jack Nicholson in The Shining.
Clive Crook, Financial Times March 3 2008

The bailout was nothing more than an agreement by the ratings agencies to pretend that the monolines were still worthy of AAA
How could MBIA - which recently had to pay 14% to borrow money ever possibly be considered AAA?
Fleck CNBC 3/3 2008

Dollar low against the euro for the fourth day in a row - touched 1.5239
BBC 29/2 2008

In today's Wall Street Journal, Allan Meltzer adds to the growing scrutiny of Ben Bernanke:
A country that will not accept the possibility of a small recession will end up having a big one
Tim Iacono February 28, 2008

Chasing the Neutral Rate Down:
Financial Conditions, Monetary Policy, and the Taylor Rule
Paul McCulley and Ramin Toloui, February 2008

Turmoil reveals the inadequacy of Basel II
Harald Benink and George Kaufman, Financial Times February 27 2008

New home sales slipped to a nearly 13-year low in January at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 588,000, sales fell 33.9% from the same month last year and hit their lowest levels since February 1995.
CNNMoney.com 27/2 2008

New figures coming out of the US economy confirms that in almost every respect it is doing significantly better than expected.
It is impressive.
Carl Bildt blog 6/12 2005

The financial system is a subsidiary of the state.
A creditworthy government can and will mount a rescue.

That is both the advantage – and the drawback – of contemporary financial capitalism.
Martin Wolf, Financial Times February 26 2008
Highly recommended

En dollar kostar nu 6,20 kronor.
Det är den lägsta kursen sedan Riksbanken lät kronan flyta i november 1992. Dollarn nådde sin absoluta topp i mitten av 2001 då den kostade 11 kronor.
DI 2008-02-27

Sales of existing homes in the U.S. fell in January to the lowest level since records began nine years ago and prices slid
Bloomberg Feb. 25 2008

Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel-prize winning economist,
said successive Federal Reserve chairmen have left the U.S. economy facing a ``very significant'' slowdown.
Bloomberg Feb. 26 2008

More than 10m would have negative equity in their homes and more than 2m foreclosures would take place over the next two years.
Lawrence Summers, Financial Times February 24 2008

Here is exactly what we are facing, right now:
Depression in the housing market; retail inflation (due entirely to the price of oil and the plummeting dollar), credit availability all but shut down, and today we discover that grain stores are at their lowest point since they began measuring in 1960: 53 days.
Michael Fox February 22, 2008

The new conundrum
When Alan Greenspan hiked short-term rates, long-term rates barely moved.
Ben Bernanke is cutting interest rates but bond yields are rising. Here's what it means.
CNN, February 25 2008

The monoline insurers, as the news goes, will be split up into bad company/good company entities,
and this "magic wand" will save the day.
It will not
Fleckenstein, February 25 2008

Stage I is to provide liquidity to the banking system at high interest rates. We passed out of Stage I at the end of last year.
Stage II is forgetting about punishing feckless financiers. We are now in Stage II.
Now Alan Blinder says that it is time to move on to Stage III: nationalization.
Brad DeLong's Weblog February 24, 2008

Ingrid Matthäus-Maier, a member of the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the CEO of the state-owned KfW banking group
As the head of KfW, Matthäus-Maier is a major shareholder in IKB the bank the German government is to bail out to the tune of 1 billion euros.
Spiegel On-line February 20, 2008

Like a 1930s bank run
There are now plans to split up the companies
that insure bonds and derivatives based on mortgages and buyout loans.

Jim Jubak 22/2 2008

A group of banks is preparing to inject $2bn to $3bn into the troubled bond insurer Ambac, to avoid a sharp cut in its triple-A credit rating that could trigger wider financial market turmoil.
Financial Times February 22 2008

Svenskarna är rikare än någonsin tack vare de senaste årens ökade bostadspriser.
Men samtidigt ökar också skulderna
Rapport 20/2 2008

Ã…rtionden med höga skatter har proletariserat den svenska medelklassen
om vi bortser från våra tillgångar i fastigheter.
Sofia Nerbrand, chefredaktör på samhällsmagasinet Neo

Credit markets were thrown into fresh turmoil on Wednesday as the cost of protecting the debt of US and European companies against default surged to all-time highs.
Financial Times February 21 2008

The pressure from politicians and the media and the fear of a banking meltdown make it all but inevitable that the Fed will go on onto the path of interest rate cuts.
It is becoming increasingly clear that this path will also lead the US economy into its next crisis.
Paul de Grauwe, Eurointelligence 18.02.2008

KKR Financial, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts listed arm, said it had begun talks with creditors
after deferring payment of billions of dollars of debt for a second time.
It had borrowed money to invest in home loans
BBC 20/2 2008

America's economy risks mother of all meltdowns
The connection between the bursting of the housing bubble and the fragility of the financial system
has created huge dangers, for the US and the rest of the world.
Martin Wolf, Financial Times, February 19 2008

Northern Rock to be nationalized
CNN 17/2 2008

Socialisterna har alltid velat förstatliga bankerna, och inte bara bankerna:
Att så många inom (s) hatar Göran Persson beror nog på att han strök socialismen ur partiprogrammet.
Den urgamla formuleringen i det socialdemokratiska partiprogrammet - "Socialdemokratin vill så omdana samhället, att bestämmanderätten över produktionen och dess fördelning läggs i hela folkets händer"... fanns kvar ännu i det som antogs efter Murens fall på partiets 31:a kongress år 1990.
Göran Persson kommer att gå till den ideologiska historien som den partiledare som på partikongressen år 2001 strök detta mål om socialismen ur partiprogammet.
Rolf Englund 8/5 2005

Sverige har tagit ett rejält kliv uppåt i OECD:s så kallade välståndsliga.
Finansminister Anders Borg har hittills inte gått ut med denna fördelaktiga nyhet. Gillar regeringen inte att skryta?
Johan Schück, DN 15/2 2008

Now, after more than three decades in the wilderness, Keynesian-style fiscal policy seems to be staging a comeback.
The Economist print 14/2 2008

The collapse of the auction-rate security market
Why has a crisis that began with loans to a limited group of home buyers ended up disrupting so much of the financial system?
Paul Krugman New York Times 15/2 2008

U.S. trade deficit december $58.8 billion
2007 deficit $711.6 billion

Kosovofrågan känslig – säger Bildt
Ekot 15 februari 2008

When Kosovo declares its independence on Sunday, the territory's veteran guerrillas will celebrate by flying the traditional black-and-red eagle flags that unite ethnic Albanians everywhere.
Financial Times February 14 2008

That the latest government rescue package will allow IKB Deutsche Industriebank shareholders to walk away with money in their pockets is a disgrace, and an incitement to imprudent lending at other banks.
Financial Times editorial 15/2 2008

Sverige har föresatt sig att genomföra stålbadet i skuldfällan. Det betyder att Nordbankens stabilitet i finansmarknadens ögon inte kan eller får ifrågasättas.
Annars skulle en akut valutakris kunna vara omedelbart förestående. Det har sannolikt varit ett av skälen för regeringens beslut att betala 2 000 miljoner kr för värdelösa aktier.
Det är ett av alla stötande inslag i finanskrisen; att låta aktieägare som Skandia, Nordbankens aktiefonder, Lundbergs, Nobel Industrier och Trygg-Hansa komma undan med blotta förskräckelsen.
Runt om i världen kommer ögonbryn att höjas.
Att rädda inte bara insättare utan även aktieägare har inte tidigare gjorts någonstans.
Rolf Englund: SvD Näringsliv, 1992-05-13

Defaults in the US housing market are spreading from sub-prime
Default rates on all outstanding home loans in the US have reached 7.3pc, the highest level since modern records began in the 1970s.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 13/02/2008

Eliot Spitzer, New York governor, gave bond insurers three to five business days to find fresh capital, or face a potential break-up by state regulators
Moody's highlighted concerns about the bond insurers by withdrawing its triple-A credit rating for Financial Guaranty Insurance Company.
Financial Times, February 14 2008

På ledarsidan i fredagens DN fanns en fräck, nära nog skamlös, kolumn
skriven av Lars Jonung, professor i nationalekonomi.

signerat Henrik Bredberg, Sydsvenskan 9 februari 2008

Häromdagen uppmärksammade jag Lars Jonungs kolumn i DN 8/2 om att "Perssons påstående att han tog Sverige ur krisen är inget annat än en myt."
Nu har de första replikerna från Bunkergänget börjat inflyta i pressen.
Rolf Englund blog 13/2 2008

Nej, myten om Göran Persson är ingen myt
/Jonungs kolumn/ är en förbluffande, nästan skamligt, enögd kolumn.
Sydsvenskan 8 februari 2008

Jonung kritiserar Göran Perssons insatser när Sverige tog sig ur 90-talskrisen.
Jag menar att historien redan har gett Persson rätt. Hela socialdemokratin kan sträcka på sig för den insatsen.

Svante Säwén, Sundsvall, Dagbladet 11/2 2008

Next Bubble Is Forming:
U.S. Government Bonds

New portal at this site

Bankers, like gangs, just get carried away
"So long as the music is playing, you've got to keep dancing. We're still dancing."
Chuck Prince, former chairman and chief executive of Citigroup,
With these comments, he got to the heart of the banking crisis.
John Kay, FT February 12 2008

Six of the nation's largest mortgage lenders have temporarily stopped foreclosure proceedings
Legal efforts to oust seriously delinquent borrowers from their homes will be postponed for 30 days.
CNNMoney February 12 2008

In a short series of briefs we will analyze how single minded monetary policies and misguided micro oriented risk management created today's financial markets' mess.
The first brief argues that any simple minded, explicit and specific targeting procedure is bound to fail at some point since these are always too restrictive for the complexity of the macro economy.
Casper de Vries, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Eurointelligence, 11/2 2008

I invented a new index yesterday.
To be known as Stevenson's Stagflation index (SSI),
it measures the number of articles in which my press cuttings database finds a mention of that unholy combination
Tom Stevenson, Daily Telegraph, February 12, 2008

Warren Buffett to the rescue?
Stocks jump after the Oracle of Omaha
offered help to troubled bond insurers by reinsuring $800 billion worth of municipal bonds
CNBC 12/2 2008

A repeat of the Great Depression is unlikely
Deflation is the ultimate economic calamity. This is also known as the liquidity trap.
Wolfgang Munchau, FT February 11 2008

The Rising Risk of a Systemic Financial Meltdown:
The Twelve Steps to Financial Disaster
by Nouriel Roubini, February 11, 2008
at John Mauldin

Consumer borrowing slowing down in December
Economists had forecast that total credit would rise by $8 billion and
instead it increased by $4.5 billion to $2.52 trillion.
CNN 7/2 2008

More than $6.7 trillion has been wiped from world stock markets
since the beginning of the year

Bloomberg 9/2 2008

The Credit Crisis is Simply Getting Worse
John Mauldin's Weekly E-Letter February 8, 2008
Highly Recommended
RE: Probably the monst frightening I have read so far

If Citigroup could have borrowed reserves from the Fed at 3-4%
wouldn't it had done so instead of raising $7.5 billion from Abu Dhabi at an interest rates of 11%?
Reuters is reporting Dozens of U.S. banks will fail by 2010.
Mish 9/2 2008

Sharia courts? Get off your knees, archbishop
Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury... Why, then, has this idiotic man suggested that some elements of Islam's sharia law should be recognised in Britain?
Simon Heffer, Daily Telegraph, 09/02/2008

Sverige ska starta en utbildning av imamer.
Det säger Lars Leijonborg.

The president Sarkozy claimed that the French republic's obsession with secularism had underestimated the importance of spiritual aspiration. That is what Archbishop Williams thinks, too.
In their speeches, both men explicitly criticise the more extreme consequences of the European Enlightenment
Charles Moore, Daily Telegraph 09/02/2008

Pia Gripenberg intervjuar Handelsbankens vd Pär Boman:
Är vi på väg in i något som kan vara lika allvarligt som finanskrisen i början av 90-talet?
-Absolut, ... Jag ser jag definitivt ett scenario som är mer bekymmersamt än den situation vi hade under första halvan av 90-talet.
DN Ekonomi 7/2 2008

Visst finns det likheter mellan dagens ekonomiska läge och 90-talskrisen. Men skillnaderna är större.
I början av 1990-talet gick Sverige in i den värsta ekonomiska krisen på många decennier.
Värdet av produktionen – BNP – sjönk tre år i rad.
Då hade Sverige fast växelkurs, en politik som hade stöd både av socialdemokratiska och borgerliga regeringar.
Det tvingade upp räntorna på nivåer som förvärrade ett redan allvarligt läge.
Dan Lucas, DN Ekonomi 7/2 2008

What is good for Ambac, the bond insurer, is good for the country.
Well, perhaps in the short run if it prevents a run on the shadow banking system. But not in the long run.
William (Bill) Gross, FT February 7 2008

Fears about corporate and commercial property debt reached new heights in the US and Europe on Friday
as investors liquidated holdings in a sign of spreading credit turmoil.
Financial Times 9/2 2008

"Perssons påstående att han tog Sverige ur krisen är inget annat än en myt."
Den förkättrade "marknaden", valutaspekulanterna, "räddade" alltså Sverige genom att pressa fram en rörlig kronkurs i november 1992
Lars Jonung, kolumn DN 8/2 2008
Highly Recommended

Lars Jonung, sanningen och kronkursförsvaret
Rolf Englund blog 8/2 2008

Kan detta vara lösningen på Subprime-krisen?
Moody's is considering a possible move to numbers-based ratings for CDOs and other structured finance products instead of the traditional letters.
CNN/Fortune 7/2 2008

The recession of 2008 will be a longer, "U-shaped" affair, driven by an unusual, persistent drop in consumption and investment.
Underlying is an "endogenous" risk appetite cycle, one that is tied to the fundamental problem facing the U.S. economy:
the build-up and subsequent implosion of the housing bubble.
John Makin, American Enterprise Institute (Timbros storasyster) January 28, 2008
Highly Recommended

Nobody wants to see a repeat of the 1930s when bank failures ushered in the Depression.
However, the bargain that was made in the 1930s has been broken.
If commercial banks were to be protected, they should not be allowed to gamble in the securities markets.
The Economist print, Jan 31st 2008

Counting the funds Kuwait and Korea committed to Merrill and Singapore and Kuwait committed to Citi,
sovereign funds have provided US and European banks about $42b in new capital over the past two quarters. Brad Setser, Feb 04, 2008

Fed's interest-rate cuts may be a quick fix for 2008,
but they'll create a massive inflationary push in 2009,
leading us right back into another boom-bust cycle.
Jim Jubak, CNBC 5/2 2008

Two points shine out about the financial system over the past three decades:
its ability to generate crises, and the mismatch between public risk and private reward.
Martin Wolf, FT February 5 2008
Highly Recommended

Who gives a damn about inflation?
Now that the age of moderation has ended, we are returning to Phillips curve-type discussion.
rising inflation is the most painless way out of a debt crisis
Wolfgang Münchau blog 31.01.2008

"Heroes: What Great Statesmen Have to Teach Us"
Paul Johnson, Historian, Hillsdale December 2007

A recession is a normal part of the business cycle.
It takes a major policy mistake by a government or central bank to create a depression.
John Mauldin, February 2, 2008

It it is far from obvious that we face a major worldwide recession.
Samuel Brittan, FT January 31 2008

The goal seems to be to avoid a 2008 recession at all costs.
The adjustment of private consumption to sustainable levels is necessary, but is likely to have a negative influence
Ricardo Hausmann, Financial Times January 31 2008

Det var inte inflationen - det var Depressionen
Germany "the new democracy survived serious threats to its existence in the early postwar years and
found a semblance of stability from 1924 to 1928,
only to be submerged by the collapse of the economy after the Wall Street crash of 1929."
Ian Kershaw, New York Times, February 3, 2008

Wall Street bond rating agencies could downgrade two big bond insurers, Ambac Financial Group and MBIA, as early as today
CNBC 30/1 2008

Meredith Whitney, whose research note on Citigroup in late October triggered a $369bn sell-off in global equities
warns Citigroup will be one of the banks to be hardest hit by a collapse in the monoline sector, along with Merrill Lynch and UBS.
Daily Telegraph, 30/1 2008

En dag på Finanspolitiska Rådet
Rolf Englund blog 29/1 2008

As a boom leads to euphoria, Minsky said, banks and other commercial lenders extend credit to ever more dubious borrowers, often creating new financial instruments to do the job
During the nineteen-eighties, junk bonds played that role. More recently, it was the securitization of mortgages
John Cassidy, The New Yorker, February 4, 2008

New home sales at 774,000, down 26 percent from the 1.05 million sales in 2006.
That was the biggest drop since the government started tracking new home sales in 1963,
CNN 28/1 2008

A combination of massive fiscal and monetary easing may reignite US consumer spending. The fundamental imbalance would remain. It would doom the world to repeat today's financial mess
Financial Times editorial 29/1 2008

A fundamental question arises:
is the financial system broken, corrupt and in need of reform; or is the system sound, yet subject to external pressures, notably heavy monetary stimulation,
with which it could not easily cope?
On that diagnosis rests the future of our highly liberalised financial markets.
Financial Times editorial January 25 2008

It's the housing market, stupid.
Mest på svenska
Rolf Englund blog 28/1 2008

The intensifying credit crunch is so severe that
lower interest rates alone will not be enough
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, managing director of the International Monetary Fund.
Reported by Chris Giles and Gillian Tett, FT January 27 2008

The debate about recession is now about how deep and global its impact will be.
Lawrence Summers, FT January 27 2008

- Grunden för ekonomisk tillväxt är efterfrågan.
Det är ganska självklart, om få vill ha de varor och tjänster som produceras kommer de inte att produceras.

Olle Wästbergs nyhetsbrev, januari 2008

1992
Sverige hade vid den tidpunkten en fast växelkursregim, vilket innebär att penningpolitiken inte kan användas för andra ändamål än att upprätthålla den fasta växelkursen. Med en sådan regim vilar det ekonomisk-politiska ansvaret för att stabilisera den efteifrågeimpuls som avregleringen ledde till på finanspolitiken. Finanspolitiken gavs dock inte den nödvändiga restriktiva utformningen.
När det inte skedde kan man naturligtvis, så här i efterhand, fråga sig varför den penningpolitiska regimen inte ändrades.
Urban Bäckström i Ekonomisk Debatt nr 1/98

A recession of global dimensions?
U.S. consumers have the past six years been the most maniacal spending machines the world has ever seen.
CNN, Geoff Colvin, January 22 2008

Bush och Fed stimulerade
Bildt, Feldt och Persson stramade åt

Rolf Englund blog 25/1 2008

2007 nearly $4.50 of credit was being generated per $1 of GDP growth.
It is too late to stop the US recession and the slowdown under way in Europe and Japan
George Magnus, senior economic adviser at UBS Investment Bank, FT

Comment by Rolf Englund (webmaster):
Is it really that GDP growth generates credit?
Is it not the other way around

Monoline meltdown?
Monolines, companies that insure against the risk of a bond or other security defaulting
Interactive feature: how they work - and the risks they pose
Financial Times

Collateralised-debt obligations (CDOs), structured investment vehicles (SIVs) and
the "monoline" bond insurers. Their plummeting fortunes helped to spark the stockmarket sell-off.
The Economist print

Banks 'may need an extra $143bn'
if bond insurers lose their top credit ratings.
BBC

I believe the monoline insurance companies like Ambac and MBIA are in worse shape than most realize,
the counter-party risk in the $45 trillion Credit Default Swap market is much worse than we realize,
John Mauldin

So Far, Hype Exceeds Progress on Bond Insurer Rescue Front
Naked Capitalism

Permanent income hypothesis
The goal of a stimulus plan should be to support overall spending, so as to avert or limit the depth of a recession. If the money doesn't get spent the plan will have failed.
Paul Krugman

The issue here is not whether there is going to be a recession in the world or individual countries, but what governments and central banks could do about it.
There are many problems about policies to maintain activity, but lack of policy instruments is not one of them.
Samuel Brittan

Volvo Personvagnar gjorde en förlust för helåret 2007
DN

"I'm not predicting the collapse of the financial system."
"This is not a normal crisis," - "It is the end of an era."
the "era of superleverage,"
George Soros, Davos, New York Times

In times of panic, grown-ups keep their nerve.
In a financial crisis, central banks must be the grown-ups.
Martin Wolf

As long as inventory is high and sales are low, prices will continue to fall.
The median price of single-family existing homes fell 2007 for the first time in 40 years.
RE: With nice chart
Tim Iacono

It's the housing market, stupid.
As long as home builders keep building at a pace greater than sales, inventories will continue to rise and prices will continue to fall.
As the recession steepens, massively increasing numbers of foreclosures will exacerbate the problem.
Mish's

Leading US banks are under pressure from New York state's insurance regulator to provide as much as $15bn to support struggling bond insurers.
FT

The trigger for the Fed action was the move on Friday by Fitch to strip the US monoline insurer AMBAC of its `AAA' rating,
with the mounting risk that the rating agencies would soon downgrade its bigger peer, MBIA.
Why does it matter?
Because they have guaranteed a large part of that $2.4 trillion bond market.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

BBC chart London stocks 1987-2008

Capitalism involves booms and busts.
There is a phenomenon known as the business cycle that loosely revolves around those booms and busts.
Bill Fleckenstein

I anledning av DNs huvudledare om att
En så stor enskild sänkning av räntan har Fed inte gjort sedan recessionen 1982.
Läget i den amerikanska ekonomin är av allt att döma värre än väntat.
Rolf Englund 23/1 2008

Svenskt Näringsliv:
Vi anser att aktiv stabiliseringspolitik inte skall bedrivas.
Remissvar på SOU 2002:16, Stabiliseringspolitik i valutaunionen

US bond insurer MBIA has disclosed it guarantees $30.6bn in complex debt investments linked to the US housing slump, BBC

See also: Hedge Funds/Subprime - Banks...

Interest rate cuts work their way through to the real economy by a number of transmission channels.
Cui bono? The banks, of course. The bank-bailout channel will be the only monetary transmission mechanism to function like clockwork.

So do not be fooled by anybody who says that the central bank should cut interest rates for the benefit of innocent citizens
Wolfgang Munchau, FT January 20 2008

Three-month Libor, overnight index swaps and interbank liquidity: they are all so 2007.
Yet all is not well - structured investment vehicles and bond insurers
FT Editorial

Är det början till slutet på en gyllene global låginflationsperiod som vi nu bevittnar?
Ragnar Roos

Carnegie Mellon economist Allan Meltzer, who is finishing the second volume of his history of the Federal Reserve,
warns that Bernanke is risking a disastrous replay of the 1970s
CNN

Bush: "We are all Keynesians again"
Bush sade inte bokstavligen att "We are all Keynesians again", men...
Rolf Englund

... the fate of global bond insurers and the $2,400bn of debt they guarantee. Ambac, one of the biggest bond insurers, or so-called monolines, was downgraded
FT January 21 2008

America's current account deficit is due more to bubbles in asset prices than to a misaligned dollar.
A resolution will require more of a correction in asset prices than a further depreciation of the dollar.
Stephen Roach

America's current account deficit is due more to bubbles in asset prices than to a misaligned dollar.
A resolution will require more of a correction in asset prices than a further depreciation of the dollar.
Stephen Roach

George Soros:
världen står inför den värsta finansiella krisen sedan andra världskriget.

DN

The apparatus of the US government is now in rescue mode.
The Federal Home Loan Bank system has quietly slipped mortgage banks $750bn since the crunch.
God bless socialism.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

The real problem is the "monoline insurers" like ACA, Ambac, and MBIA.
Here's a quick primer on how they work.
John Mauldin

The next banking crisis on the way
Write-downs for high-risk, high-yield corporate debt, known as 'junk,' could dwarf losses in the mortgage mess.
Jim Jubak

Stagflation. Plain and simple.
Asset prices simply cannot be justified relative to consumer prices.

FakeBen
Higly Recommended

Wall Street bonuses fell to $33.2bn, the New York state comptroller said.
Financial firms have written off about $100bn as a result of the crisis.
BBC with good links

De fem största amerikanska investmentbankerna har betalat bonusar om totalt 39 miljarder dollar,
motsvarande 256 miljarder kronor, för 2007.
DI

Foreign funds lead $21bn US bank rescue
FT

Merrill Lynch loss after $14.1bn write-down related to sub-prime mortgages.
Nice table with "MAIN SUB-PRIME LOSSES SO FAR"
BBC

Den underliggande inflationen, även kallad KPIX, hamnade på 2,0 procent.
GunnarÖrn

US annual inflation, 4.1 per cent,
rising at fastest since 1990
FT

Högsta svenska inflationssiffran sedan 1993
Ekot

Priserna steg med 3,5 procent dec-dec men inte mycket av allmänna prisstegringar.
Mer än 2,5 procentenheter skulle kunna räknas bort som tillfälliga effekter, t ex från själva räntehöjningarna som skall dämpa inflationen.
Danne Nordling

150 persons ? Maximum size of encounters in which in one knows the identity of all others, the 'socially large world,' (Dunbar's number).
15 persons ? Maximum size of encounters in which one knows the actions of the others, the 'socially small world.'

Hans L Zetterberg

Människan är ett flockdjur. Det förklarar kanske vårt intresse för Paris Hilton?
Rolf Englund blog

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