hyper-complex credit bubble

hyper-complex credit bubble affecting a dizzying array of little-known but somehow completely intertwined components. No wonder the coverage has been as inconsistent and spotty as, well, the auction-rate market.The auction-rate market? What's that?<br />Really, how many financial journalists knew what the auction-rate market was-or that it even existed-until a few weeks ago? Or a SIV, for that matter? Or a conduit? Or a credit-default swap? Or even bond insurance? This is normally dense, difficult, unglamourous stuff. So we're left with a, well, strange situation. Thanks to the blogosphere, never before has so much media pantingly followed finance. But never before has the media produced so little real information on such a big event. Ask yourself: has any one outlet, online or otherwise, emerged as the go-to source for original insight into our current situation?To be sure, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and the Financial Times have dutifully covered many of the individual shoes that have dropped as we fall deeper into an economic quagmire. And in the blogosphere, Portfolio.com's Felix Salmon, for one, has done a decent job providing running commentary on developments and directing his readers to other outlets when they turn up something interesting. But no one seems to be putting it together into a coherent package or explaining how these complex markets and products fit together and why anyone should care about them. Instead, we get general rehashings like Mort Zuckerman's elementary explainer in the Feb. 27 issue of The New Republic. Its headline: "Panic!"<br />A Subprime-Induced Crisis, that spread from the mortgage companies to the largest hedge funds, to the biggest banks…and finally to the plummeting stock markets.<br />A Powerless, Reckless Fed: The Bernanke "Plunge Protection Team" recklessly cut rates as quickly as possible to fight off a possible recession. <br />A Worldwide Credit Orgy: The ECB pumped an astonishing one-half trillion dollars into the global financial system in late December to help alleviate the credit crunch in a single week. <br />An Epidemic of Writedowns: Wall Street's biggest financial firms wrote-down tens of BILLIONS to keep their books in the black. <br />Biggest Banks Crying "Uncle!" Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) from Singapore and China road to the rescue to bailout "too-big-to-fall" banks like UBS and Citigroup. And just yesterday, Qatar officials announced they would pump as much as $15 billion of their Sovereign Wealth Funds to buy distressed European and U.S. bank stocks over the next 12 months. <br />Global Stocks Head One Way — Down: Not to mention, the Dow dropped over 11% since just November 1st. And, we just had the worst January for stocks since 1990.

hyper-complex credit bubble

hyper-complex credit bubble affecting a dizzying array of little-known but somehow completely intertwined components. No wonder the coverage...

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