Canadian Solar Inc. (CSIQ) yesterday raised its fiscal 2009 guidance. The company now expects shipments for the third quarter to surpass the high end of its prior guidance. The optimism stems from a high level of interest in Canadian Solar's products at the Hamburg trade show and subsequent purchase orders.   Based on its un-audited financial results, Canadian Solar now expects net revenues for the third quarter to be approximately $210 million to $215 million, with shipments of approximately 101 MW to 103 MW, compared to a prior guidance for shipments of approximately 90 MW to 100 MW. The company expects a gross margin of 16% to 17% for the third quarter.   Canadian Solar is raising its guidance for full year 2009 shipments to approximately 295 MW-305 MW, including expected shipments of 127 MW-137 MW for the fourth quarter. This compares to a prior guidance for shipments ...

Billionaire investor George Soros said yesterday (Monday) that the U.S. recovery would be a slow one because of all the “basically bankrupt” financial companies impeding it.

U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Congress agreed Friday that the financial system – not the American taxpayer – should bear the costs of bank bailouts. Sheila Bair, head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC), wants the banks to ante up $45 billion – three years’ worth of deposit-insurance premiums – to bail out the fund that insures bank deposits.

When it comes to bank stocks, we all know that there were a number of Money Morning readers shrewd enough to buy Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C) shares when the foundering giant’s stock price was below $1 a share.

If you’re one of those investors, good for you: With Citi’s shares now trading at nearly $4.70 a share,

...

I just read a mind blowing article. This is one of the most intense rants I have ever seen. Yet the sad part is the author is not exaggerating. Hat tip to Stewart Dougherty, this piece is an eye opener. I have excerpted the best part: There is accumulating evidence that the Washington – Wall Street moral hazard experiment has gone disastrously wrong, and that just like any other accidental discharge of a deadly virus, the moral hazard virus is now loose and swiftly propagating throughout society. By so blatantly colluding with Wall Street, Washington has lost all moral authority, and the people now have only one place to turn: themselves. An ethic of, “If they can do it, so can I,” is spreading, as people realize that fabric of American society has been shredded and replaced by a free-for-all mentality whereby everyone must fend for oneself in ...

Wersquo;re heading into September this week, so itrsquo;s a good time to revisit the historic seasonality of gold and gold stocks. Over the past four decades, September has been the best time for gold in terms of its month-over-month price appreciation. You can see this on the chart belowmdash;in a typical year, the price of gold in September rises 2.5 percent above its August price. The gold price has risen in 16 of the 20 Septembers since 1989, by far the best success ratio of any month of the year. What accounts for this predictable trend? September kicks off several of the planetrsquo;s most potent gold-demand drivers: The post-monsoon wedding season in India and Diwali, one of the countryrsquo;s most important festivals; Restocking by jewelry makers in advance of the Christmas shopping season in the United States; The holy month of Ramadan in the Muslim ...

Wersquo;re heading into September this week, so itrsquo;s a good time to revisit the historic seasonality of gold and gold stocks. Over the past four decades, September has been the best time for gold in terms of its month-over-month price appreciation. You can see this on the chart belowmdash;in a typical year, the price of gold in September rises 2.5 percent above its August price. The gold price has risen in 16 of the 20 Septembers since 1989, by far the best success ratio of any month of the year. What accounts for this predictable trend? September kicks off several of the planetrsquo;s most potent gold-demand drivers: The post-monsoon wedding season in India and Diwali, one of the countryrsquo;s most important festivals; Restocking by jewelry makers in advance of the Christmas shopping season in the United States; The holy month of Ramadan in the Muslim ...

The main purpose behind the FDIC is to insure bank deposits. To do so, it must have money available to pay off depositors. That pool of capital is rapidly draining away. The deposit insurance fund fell to $10.4 billion at the end of the second quarter from $13.0 billion at the end of the first quarter. As a percentage of insured deposits, that is down to 0.22% from 0.27% at the end of the first quarter and 1.01% a year ago. Normal is about 1.20% of deposits. (See graph below from http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/). The decline came despite a special assessment on the banks that brought in $9.1 billion in the quarter. Why? It is because of all the Friday night pizza parties Sheila Bair (head of the FDIC) has been holding. During the quarter, 24 insured institutions with combined assets of $26.4 billion failed, at a net ...

Alabama regional lender, Colonial Bank, just became the 6th largest bank failure in U.S. history and the largest since Washington Mutual last year.

Regulators seized Colonial last Friday, selling the bank’s deposits and assets to their competitor BB&T. Colonial was founded by real estate developer, Robert E. Lowder in 1981. The bank stayed true to its roots, right to the end (of the housing bubble).

In a 2006 interview, Lowder said, “We’ve always been a real estate bank. We understand real estate lending. For us, we think it’s a good safe market to be in.” Evidently, they didn’t understand the market as well as they thought. The bank sunk under the weight of $1.7 billion in losses on bad real estate loans.

The real question regarding the failure of Colonial, is what this will do to the Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF) maintained by the FDIC.

The FDIC Deposit Insurance Fund started 2008

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Deprecated and reduced as a financial asset, gold is fast-gaining new buyers yet remains under-invested compared to previous crises…

“FEAR, Mr. Bond, takes gold out of circulation and hoards it against the evil day,” as 007 learns from a Bank of England officer in Ian Fleming’s Goldfinger (1959).

So “in a period of history when every tomorrow may be the evil day, it is fair to say that a fat proportion of the gold dug out of one corner of the earth is at once buried again in another corner.”

Evil-day gold buying really motored since the credit collapse began in August 2007. Soaking up investment dollars worldwide, in fact, new allocations to the metal – whether trust fund or owned outright – swelled by 38% during the first quarter of 2009 compared with total demand between Jan. and March 2008, according to marketing-group the World Gold Council (WGC).

Within that figure,

...

Sovereign Wealth Funds: $7 Trillion Reasons to Stay Invested

by Alexander Green, Oxford Club Investment Director

In February, I wrote that the decline in stocks was just about over. Why?

There was more money available to buy shares than at any time in almost two decades. The $8.85 trillion held in cash, bank deposits and money market funds was equal to 74% of the market value of U.S. companies, the highest ratio since 1990, according to the Federal Reserve.

What happened in the past when cash reached these levels?

In September 1974, cash on hand reached $604.5 billion, representing a record 1.21 times the U.S. stock market’s capitalization. That preceded a 31% gain in equities between October 1974 and March 1975. In July 1982, just as a 20-month bear market was ending, cash as a percentage of the U.S. stock market’s value rose to 95%. The S&P 500 began a six-month, ...

by Edward Hugh: Barcelonabr /br /span style="font-family:arial;font-size:78%;"/spana href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_ngczZkrw340/SgiAR06lzrI/AAAAAAAAN1E/-NbHseEOV1Q/s1600-h/ecb+one.png"img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5334654802370875058" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 399px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 264px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_ngczZkrw340/SgiAR06lzrI/AAAAAAAAN1E/-NbHseEOV1Q/s400/ecb+one.png" border="0" //abr /br /blockquote“The 60 billion euros they announced is peanuts for an economy the size of the euro zone,” economics professor and former Bank of England policy maker Willem Buiter said at a conference in Dublin yesterday. “I expect they will announce more or that the recession in the euro zone will be longer and deeper than would otherwise be necessary. They have a record of being somewhat behind the curve.” /blockquoteblockquoteEuropean car sales dropped 12 percent in April.... Bayerische Motoren Werke AG’s registrations dropped by almost one-third to 55,633 even as the German market expanded 19 percent, helped by the government’s 2,500 euro ($3,400) sales bonus .........Spain extended its auto-sales slump with a 46 percent plunge in registrations, the largest among the continent’s ...