global markets

The Libor scandal has engulfed banks around the world in controversy, forcing numerous traders and executives to resign. Banks globally are being charged with manipulating the rate that is used in setting trillions in dollars of derivatives worldwide, and the true impact of this scandal may yet be...

As I wrote in “Don’t Be Fooled: Get Short Now”, the euro is not that different from Enron, WorldCom or the Madoff fund. All of these organizations were able to pretend they were profitable or solvent long after they were insolvent. Now markets are finally acknowledging the intractability of the...

Thursday's sea of red left a wide array of sector ETFs looking significantly worse than they did just a few days ago. Growing concerns about the intensity of a U.S. economic slowdown make matters worse, thanks to another round of troubling data points. Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) is not helping...

MSCI (NYSE: MSCI), a firm with indexes tracked by dozens of developed and emerging market ETFs, said that its MSCI Greece Index has been added to the review list for potential reclassification to emerging markets status. In the report, MSCI stated, "[t]he MSCI Greece Index is structurally no...

By: Benjamin Shepherd, Investing Daily The S&P 500 has given up 7 percent since peaking in April 2012, primarily because of uncertainty regarding Greece’s commitment to the terms of its bailout.  If a second round of elections in Greece on June 17 fails to produce a government...

The U.S. stock market fell apart late in the day on Wednesday after the major averages spent much of the session near the unchanged mark. Investors continue to sell risk assets as fears ramp up over rising Spanish bond yields, signalling that the European sovereign debt crisis may be spinning out...

Ponder this for a brief second: before June 11, 2012, the financial jargon word “Spailout” never existed. Perhaps it was scribbled on a whiteboard hung in an investment bank conference room should Spain score some money from an outside party to save its banking system (sound smart: “bailout”),...

Not that long ago, many so-called experts, pundits, and traders speculated that the U.S. dollar would lose its reserve currency status. The dollar appeared to be on its way to more declines against its major rivals amid the loss of the prestigious AAA credit rating, rising deficits, and no...

Over this past weekend the Spanish government secured $125 billion in bailout funds (Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy prefers to call it a line of credit) to secure the Spanish banks.  The goal was to “ring fence” the banks from any further runs, particularly in light of this...

The Economic Issues and Some Defensive Strategies and Ideas According to the WESP "World Economic Situation and Prospects Report" from the United Nations, the US and global economy is  in a rut and having extreme difficulty moving forward.  The report recommends  that governments must be...