The housing market continues to show slow but solid improvement with single family starts rising by 3.2% from April on a seasonally adjusted basis.  While I don’t believe that housing starts or building permits are the best indicators for housing recovering as those numbers are more indicative of new construction.  The key to lifting housing...Read More

This article makes no sense to me whatsoever as basically Sheila Bair is advocating banks taking on more long term debt to fund their businesses.  The remaining Big 4 banks have robust deposit franchises that fund their business at a low cost.  These are not brokered deposits such as companies like Countrywide Financial were reliant...Read More

This is an interesting article on the risk on/risk off mentality that has existed in the markets since 2008.  There is a big difference between and investing and trading and I think this mentality pertains to trading.  Benjamin Graham developed the concept of “Mr. Market” and the primary premise is that over the short term...Read More

Southern Company CEO Tom Fanning offers some interesting perspectives on long term energy solutions.  He believes that Natural Gas consumption will rise by 50% and over the long term this will likely lead to price increases that might make coal viable once again.  In addition there is the risk the environmental concerns over “fracking” could...Read More

This article outlines some of the upside opportunity in Spain.  Their problems primarily reside in the banking and private sectors but this weekends bank recapitalization should help things considerably.  It will be interesting to see how credit markets react to the deal but my gut feeling is that it will be positive.  I think there...Read More

There is no doubt that RIMM has really dug a hole for itself with the huge lag between new products.  Blackberry 10 must hit it big or the company will likely be sold.  I still believe the company makes a lot of sense for a buyer such as a Microsoft who could expand their mobile...Read More

It looks like John Malone is moving forward with his plan to fully control Sirius XM Radio (SIRI).  This was without a doubt one of the finest investment of the financial crisis.  Malone owns some very valuable assets within his media empire and I’ll be curious how he leads Sirius, which is without a doubt...Read More

The sour grapes relating to the Facebook (FB) IPO continue in today’s WSJ as Morgan Stanley’s (MS) CEO James Gorman defends the firms handling of the process.  It is my opinion that the firm acted well within its duties and I would wager that if the stock had rallied rewarding speculators, the firm would be...Read More

While I don’t think this goes far enough I still do view the discussion of a ‘Banking Union’ as a positive.  This crisis will not be resolved without a stricter Union.  The best solution would be for Euro-Bonds, a TARP-like program, and more tangible oversight of fiscal budgets.  There is no EU if Germany remains...Read More

This article discusses the way that even established European companies are having to come to U.S. banks to meet their lending needs, due to the deleveraging process in Europe.  This is very important as U.S. banks profits have been hamstrung by a variety of things with one of them being lack of credit demand.  Smart...Read More