William Sterling of Trilogy Global Advisors has an interesting new paper on the abrupt changes in financial markets subsequent to Lehman's bankruptcy on September 15, 2008.

Sterling's paper is in part a response to earlier analyses by John Taylor (2008, 2009) and John Cochrane and Luigi Zingales who noted that the spread between the LIBOR interest rate (London Interbank Offered Rate) and the OIS (Overnight Index Swap) rose only gradually following the Lehman bankruptcy, leading these scholars to see Lehman as just one of many relevant developments at the time. But Sterling questions the meaningfulness of the LIBOR or OIS indicators during these weeks given that markets seized up and little trading activity was occurring in these instruments. Sterling instead proposes to take a look at Bloomberg Financial Conditions Index, which Bloomberg launched in August 2008. The index is based in part on

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Dan Holland has just interviewed Wall Street chronicler Charlie Gasparino’s. The first few paragraphs of the interview that appeared on RealClearMarkets are published below.

There’s good reason to believe that Gasparino’s latest book, The Sellout, will become the definitive book on the current financial crisis and the events that led up to “The Great Recession.” Spanning three decades, The Sellout pulls no punches in chronicling the rise and fall of excessive Wall Street leverage and risk taking, as well as the cast of colorful characters that ultimately brought the US financial system to its knees. It will hit bookshelves tomorrow [Tuesday].

RealClearMarkets: You sat down recently with Wall Street legend Teddy Forstmann to discuss your new book and the genesis of the mess we now find ourselves in. Forstmann said it all began as a “cold” back in the 1970s and 1980s, and that since

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Amidst all the soundbites and data tidbits about the condition of the U.S. fiscal and debt situation, it may be helpful to look at the data produced by the Congressional Budget Office.  While they may be way off, it is a good idea to know what figures your government is using to make its spending and tax policy decisions.

The downloadable PDF file provides an historical perspective from 1968 through 2008, and projections for 2018 for taxes, spending and public debt.

click image to download PDF file

On the economic projection front, the CBO sees real GDP growth for 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2018 at: -2.5%, 1.7%, 3.5% and 2.2% respectively.

They see unemployment for the same periods being: 9.3%, 10.2%, 9.1% and 4.8%.

For CPI, the CBO sees -0.5%, 1.7%, 1.3% and 2.0% for

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David Einhorn, highly respected hedge fund manager of Greenlight Capital and author of “Fooling some of the people all of the time” yesterday delivered the keynote address at the Value Investing Congress. His full speech can be accessed here, but Rolfe Winkler of Reuters has very handily published the highlights, as posted below.

On Bernanke and Geithner: Presently, Ben Bernanke and Tim Geithner have become the quintessential short-term decision makers. They explicitly “do whatever it takes” to “solve one problem at a time” and deal with the unintended consequences later. It is too soon for history to evaluate their work, because there hasn’t been time for the unintended consequences of the “do whatever it takes” decision-making to materialize.

On too big to fail and the true lesson of Lehman: The proper way to deal with too-big-to-fail, or too inter-connected to fail, is to make sure

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Although investors appeared hesitant and positioned themselves ahead of corporate earnings reports, the Dow Jones industrial average inched closer to the 10,000-level before some afternoon weariness saw indexes sinking sharply.  At the end of the session that was characterized by slow trading, the Dow managed to notch up some gains to remain in contention for the 10,000 mark – a level it last breached nearly a fortnight after Lehman’s fateful collapse in September 2008. 

The Dow Jones industrial average, which rose as high as 9931.82 points in the morning, gained 20 points to close at 9885.80.  The broad S&P 500 index rose 4.70 points, or 0.44%, to close at 1,076.19 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq ended the day little changed.  Bond markets were closed for the Columbus Day holiday.  On the New York Stock Exchange, 16 stocks were higher in price for every 14 that fell.

Eight of the ten

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For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL – October 12, 2009 – Zacks.com announces the list of stocks featured in the Analyst Blog. Every day the Zacks Equity Research analysts discuss the latest news and events impacting stocks and the financial markets. Stocks recently featured in the blog include: Ford (F), Honda (HMC), Caterpillar (CAT), Boeing (BA) and Chevron Corp. (CVX).

Get the most recent insight from Zacks Equity Research with the free Profit from the Pros newsletter: http://at.zacks.com/?id=5513

Here are highlights from Friday’s Analyst Blog:

Trade Deficit Improves

While the year-over-year improvement in the trade deficit is very good news, the reason for it is not so good. It was a reflection of the overall collapse in world trade, something that makes everyone poorer. As far as the GDP calculations are concerned, it does not make any difference

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In August, the monthly trade deficit fell to $30.7 billion from $31.9 billion in July. We got improvement from both sides as exports rose by $0.2 billion to $128.2 billion and imports fell to $158.9 billion from $159.8 billion in July, a decrease of $0.9 billion. This reverses two months where the trade deficit rose slightly. On the other hand, over the last year the trade deficit is down dramatically. A year ago our imports were $63.6 billion higher than now, at $222.6 billion, and our exports were $33.4 billion higher at $161.7 billion, resulting in a deficit of $60.9 billion. While the year-over-year improvement in the trade deficit is very good news, the reason for it is not so good. It was a refection of the overall collapse in world trade, something that makes everyone poorer. As far as the GDP calculations are concerned, it does ...

The cost of insuring against the default of major financial institutions has reached its lowest level since June 2008, according to the Counterparty Risk Index from Credit Derivatives Research LLC.

The chart below shows the Counterparty Risk Index (CRI) history since the beginning of 2008. The index is an unweighted average of the credit default swap spreads of 14 major financial institutions. The left-hand scale gives the cost (in basis points) of insuring against default for a five-year term.

 

 

The three big spikes on the chart mark the near-failure of Bear Stearns (in March 2008), the Lehman default (September 2008) and renewed concerns over bank safety at the market’s nadir in March 2009.

If crises appeared at six-monthly intervals since last spring, this time we appear to have broken out of the cycle.

What about the individual banks that make up the index? Here is a chart,

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In our history, the American nation committed obvious sins against select groups of people, and we’ve paid bitterly for some of that. But now it’s our sins against the land itself that threaten to sink the USA as a viable enterprise.

It’s odd, that in his otherwise excellent blow-by-blow account (”Eight Days,” in the Sept 21 New Yorker Magazine) of the September 2008 Wall Street meltdown that left Lehman dead, and AIG croaking in a ditch, and the banking system in general functionally crippled, reporter James B. Stewart never got around to really describing the cause of it all — namely, the on-the-ground material catastrophe of American suburbia.

It was the worthlessness of the tradable securitized debt associated with all those overpriced (and overvalued) chipboard and vinyl houses, smeared recklessly over the American landscape, that started all the trouble in the first place. And it is our inability to come to

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The chart below, courtesy of Bespoke, shows that the S&P 500 Technology sector yesterday became the first of the ten major sectors of the S&P 500 Index to close above its “pre-Lehman” level of September 12, 2008. “… while the bulls will take it as a sign of the markets returning to a state of normalcy, bears will need to see a more convincing break …,” said Bespoke.

However, while the the other sector and broad market indices have gained considerably from their lows, they still have more work to do to reach the levels of before Lehman’s collapse, ranging from Financial (+36.8%) to Health Care (+11.3%). The major indices need to rise by the following percentages: S&P 500 Index +16.8%, Dow Jones Industrial Index +16.2% and Nasdaq Composite Index +5.4%.

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