Please watch my new YouTube video: “My fear is a credit crunch”
My one-hundredth-and-thirty-third YouTube video “My fear is a credit crunch” went up today. My fear is a credit crunch. I’m not as concerned with the Fed raising rates, or a recession–those are sort of run of the usual events. But a credit...
Bank lending officers haven’t received the message–they keep restricting credit
This isn’t good news for the prospects for a sustained economic recovery in the United States from the pandemic recession of 2020. The 25 biggest U.S. banks reduced their total loan portfolios by 8% in 2021 through March from the same point in 2020, according to...
Out of mind, the credit crunch keeps boiling
Okay, so I know the financial markets aren’t worried–today–about the real economy. But the real economy will count someday and need to be figured into stock prices for things like banks (and who knows what else.). And right now we’re getting...
The consumer credit crunch rolls on
Capital One Financial (COF), the third-largest U.S. credit card lender, is cutting borrowing limits on it credit cards. The company has said it’s no big deal, telling Bloomberg that “Capital One periodically reviews accounts based on a variety of factors and may...
Federal Reserve puts its corporate-bond-buying vehicle in motion
On March 23, the Federal Reserve announced that it would create a facility to buy corporate bunds and ETFs tracking the corporate bond market. That facility remained an all-talk/no-action vehicle until today when the New York Federal Reserve Bank announced that its...
Credit crunch hits credit cards hard
Credit card issuers have already cut the credit limits or closed credit card accounts entirely for about 1 in 4 credit card holders–almost 50 million Americans–in the past 30 days, according to a survey byLending Tree’s Compare Cards website. The...
Treasury to borrow $3 trillion during April to June quarter
Okay, the Treasury actually will need to borrow only $2.99 trillion, but close enough, no? It will still be a record. The previous record for borrowing in a single quarter was $530 billion in the July to September 2008 quarter in the fallout from the global financial...
Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase stop accepting applications for home equity loans
As economic indicators go, this isn’t one that I follow in normal times. In normal times banks are happy to accept an application for a home equity loan from anyone who owns a house. Real estate is a good credit risk. In normal times. But if you’re still...
Fed to provide “infinite” money to credit markets
Today, March 23, the Federal Reserve announced that it would backstop all credit markets in the United States without limits. The Fed said it would purchase Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities “in the amounts needed to support smooth market functioning.” In...
More liquidity from the Fed helps reassure financial markets
The Federal Reserve is launching a special fund to keep credit flowing in the short-term commercial paper market that many companies use to raise cash for day-to-day operations. (Commercial paper generally matures in fewer than 270 days.) Starting today the Fed will...
Take Wall Street traders complaints of a lack of liquidity today very, very seriously
Money managers are saying that it’s increasingly difficult to trade due to a lack of liquidity caused by huge swings in asset prices. “I have yet to find liquidity,” Richard Hodges, a money manager at Nomura Asset Management, told Bloomberg. “There is none.”...
Credit markets are even uglier than stock markets
By now I assume you know that today was another brutal day for U.S. stocks (although markets moved up significantly in the last hour.) The Standard & Poor’s 500 closed down another 1.71% and the Dow Jones Industrials dropped 0.98%. The NASDAQ Composite was...
If you’re worried about the Credit Crunch, then Ford debt nearing junk status is a bad sign
I’ve written more than once about my conviction–and consequent worry–that we’re headed for a global credit crunch sometime in the next three to four years. I’m looking for the kind of Minsky Moment that sees financial markets go into...
Is a slow-motion credit crunch already here?
Thanks, folks. For weeks now I’ve been writing (especially in a series of special reports on my subscription site JubakAM.com) about an impending credit crunch that would produce a reset (a polite term for a big whoosh down the toilet) in global asset prices....Jim’s Daily Email Alerts:
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