Companies are selling bonds like madmen. This year through Tuesday, investment-grade and junk-rated companies have sold $438 billion in new bonds, up 14% from the prior record for this time of the year, set in...
Ratings agency Fitch had already warned about Canada’s magnificent housing bubble that is even more magnificent than the housing bubble in the US that blew up so spectacularly. “High household debt relative to disposable income” – at...
Internet advertising is hot. Everyone wants a slice of it. An entire “advertising technology” subculture has sprung up in San Francisco and elsewhere. There are hundreds of these startups, algorithm-driven middlemen and personal-data-gatherers, trying to...
Russians are watching with trepidation and with memories of what happened last time to their rubles: near total destruction. They trust their banknotes as far as they can throw them. And they’re taking action. They’re converting their...
“Japan Government Bonds Rise as Market Shrugs Off Downgrade,” the Wall Street Journal headline said with some astonishment after Moody’s had dared to downgrade Japan’s credit rating to A1 – fifth notch from the top....
Commerzbank, Germany’s second-largest bank, a toppling marvel of ingenuity during the Financial Crisis that was bailed out by ever dutiful if unenthusiastic taxpayers, will now reward these very folks with what Germans have come to...
This has been one heck of a phenomenon to observe as it climbs relentlessly from one level to the next, and each level seems to be so out of whack and so crazy that no...
It was a crummy week for the world’s major stock markets: One, volatility came roaring back. Forget complacency. People are still rubbing their necks from whiplash. Two, the Fed hype-effect fizzled. The publication of the...
Not everything is hunky-dory in the world of stocks. The S&P 500, which has been hovering near its all-time high and hasn’t experienced a decline of 10% in three years, has been the focal point of...
“Here’s when US equity and bond markets will change direction,” Cali Money Man grumbled a few days ago. He is a wealth manager and has been on the job at brokerage firms and large banks...
America is on the verge of becoming a natural gas net exporter in a year or two. It can relieve energy-starved Japan from extortionary prices and free Europe from the clutches of Gazprom. A number of liquefied...
In our neck of the woods, Vinod Khosla is currently most notorious for trying to boot people off Martins Beach, across the coastal mountains from Silicon Valley. Californians love their beaches, even if the water is...
