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GM and Credit Default Swaps

Don’t you wish you’d never heard about credit default swaps? I do. Somehow they have become inextricably linked in my mind with AIG and our great financial crash. Now I bet that GM also wished the darned things would go away. Lenders buy credit default swaps to insure themselves against loss when a company they […]

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Our Trade Problem

Today’s trade release by the Commerce Department is interesting from a number of angles. Let’s get the hard data out of the way first: the US trade deficit widened in March, which is the month for which we have the latest information. The gap between exports and imports rose to $27.6 billion, up from $26.1 […]

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The New Reality

The conclusion of the banking stress tests continued to dominate the economic news through the weekend. For many casual observers it was a conclusion that could not come fast enough. For months we have been told that the banks need fixing; we have lavished vast sums of taxpayer money on them; we have suffered through […]

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