Archive for May, 2011
China’s Banking Woes
Two recent articles published by Caixin Online point out different, but related problems facing Chinese banks. The first notes something that many have long suspected: China’s appreciating exchange rate has cost the country a lot of money – more than $2 trillion. The second article questions the value of assets held by China’s banks. The [...]
Austerity in the UK
Recent economic figures from the United Kingdom were not as bad as expected. Mostly, that is. And sometimes even being able to jump over a very low bar makes politicians and forex traders cheer. The UK confirmed its 0.5% GDP growth for the first quarter of 2011, inducing such a huge sigh of relief that [...]
Is the ECB Europe’s Real “Bad” Bank?
The sovereign debt of the eurozone’s periphery, especially Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain, has been pretty well documented as a cause for significant concern to the world’s financial system. Not so well understood is the danger to the system from the assets the European Central Bank has added to its balance sheet. Germany’s Der Speigel [...]
Clouds On the Horizon? Solar Stocks Lose Some Shine
Now that most solar makers have reported quarterly earnings, it’s worth looking at both the outcome and the outlook for solar photovoltaic (PV) cells. There were some winners during the quarter, but more losers, and, for the most part, the bad news weighed more heavily than the good. To step back a bit, during the [...]
When Billionaire Gold Bugs Dissent, Paulson vs. Soros
Last week could have been called “Whale Watching Week” as the May 15 date marked all of the latest investment holdings of the greatest fund managers found in 13F filings with the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC). Two highly followed billionaire fund managers are John Paulson and George Soros, and these two had been two of the [...]
Solar Stock Shenanigans
The week ending May 20 was a good week for one solar player, and a not-so-good week for others. Solar photovoltaic (PV) cell and module makers had a tough week, while one equipment maker posted a new 52-week high. First the not-so-good news. Solar PV makers Suntech Power Holdings Co. Ltd. (NYSE: STP) and Canadian Solar [...]
Sovereign Debt Woes Spread in Eurozone
Fears of contagion in Europe are mounting following a downgrade of Italy’s credit rating from ‘stable’ to ‘negative’ by Standard & Poor’s. The country did maintain its A-rated long-term debt and its ‘A1+’ short-term debt rating, but there are worries about political gridlock following election losses by Italy’s ruling party. While the ratings change is [...]
Zecco Brings Wall Street to Facebook
It’s not often you get a chance to release a product to an instant potential user base of more than 600 million people. It’s even better to be the first one in the world to do so. A lot of companies will be scratching their heads today, thinking “Wow, why didn’t we think of that?” [...]
IDC Predicts Huge Growth for ARM Chips
When technology research firm IDC issued its latest report on PC microprocessor unit shipments recently, this one sentence in the press release was getting the lion’s share of the attention: “By 2015, IDC expects that over 13% of PC processors will be based on the ARM architecture.” That’s not good news for Intel Corp. (NASDAQ: [...]
A Way Out for Ireland
Irish economist Morgan Kelly recently published in The Irish Times a short history of the European Central Bank’s bailout of Ireland’s banks. The short version of Kelly’s thoughts on the subject is that Ireland got a bad deal, but there’s a way to get out of it. Kelly points out that the Irish government’s guarantee [...]
