Business

At the peak of the craziness of the last cycle, banks took to protecting themselves by buying (credit) protection on other banks as a 'hedge' for systemic risk (which instead exacerbated contagion concerns, seemingly missing the facts that their bids drove risk wider, increaing counterparty risks, and that the inevitable collapse required to trigger these trades would also mean the payoffs to the 'hedges' would never be realized).

Submitted by Gail Tverberg via Our Finite World,

Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,

If the American Dream depends on skyrocketing debt built on a weakening foundation of stagnant productivity and income, then it is indeed over.

While we await the government's retail sales data on December 11, the last official economic report the Fed will see before its December 16 FOMC decision, Bank of America has been kind enough to provide its own full-month credit card spending data.

Submitted by Jeffrey Snider via Alhambra Investment Partners,

Now that Kinder Morgan has come out with a massive dividend cut, I think it will get harder to ignore that this isn’t just about crude oil prices and the death of “transitory.” There is a financial element here that is perhaps even more important.