For over a year now we have been warning that many large Euro banks are in serious financial trouble. This week, after burning €3.6 bln ($4 bln) of emergency central bank funding in the first two days of the week, Spain’s Banco Popular suffered the eurozone’s first large-scale bank run. A steady stream of deposit […]

With this being such a critical time for the US and global economies, the US voted in Donald Trump, a candidate who was a non-politician, who represented change. Trump was elected with a platform of tax and regulatory cuts, and infrastructure spending. He also promised to “drain the swamp” and remove the corruption and lobbying […]

In 2016 US auto makers sold more cars than ever before, with many of the mainstream media hailing this as clear evidence of rising consumer confidence. But it was not just auto sales that revved higher, so too did auto loans. US auto buyers racked up $1.2 trillion in auto loans last year, an increase […]

France had the first round of its presidential election yesterday, and in order for a candidate to win, they would have had to receive over 50% of the votes.  If no candidates gets more than 50% of the votes, then the top two candidates move on to a run-off election on May 7th. No candidate […]

As we highlighted in Wednesday’s Musings, the US Treasury Department issued copious amounts of debt in the form of US Treasury bonds to cover massive deficits, and to try stimulating the economy. We also showed how the Fed was a major purchaser of those bonds and accumulated a massive $4.5 trillion in assets on its […]

As the 2008 financial crisis hit, the US Treasury Department issued massive amounts of debt in the form of US Treasury bonds to cover massive deficits, and to try to stimulate the economy. As we can see on the following chart, on August 20/08 the US Federal Reserve (Fed) owned just under $900 billion in […]

It doesn’t matter which party is in power in the US, as both Republicans and Democrats overspend their budgets. The pace of overspending has ramped up with Bush and Obama. In fact, Obama racked up more debt than all other presidents combined. With Trump’s promises of massive spending, this trend is not likely to end […]

From Market Watch…. Even as the economy continues to improve, student loan borrowers are still struggling to cope with their debts, a new analysis indicates. Roughly 1.1. million borrowers entered default on their Direct Loans, a type of federal student loan, last year, about the same as the previous year, according to an analysis of […]