Three Financial Groups In Trouble The impact of the credit crunch saw two banks and a financial and industrial group fail on Friday in three different countries in the most damaging day so far since the crisis started last August.US banking regulators on Friday swooped in to take over mortgage lender IndyMac Bancorp Inc, the second-largest bank failure in US history and the fifth bank to close this year. In Denmark the country’s central bank bailed out the Roskilde Bank after it had encountered severe liquidity strains following asset write-downs. And in London, media reports said the $A4 billion Dawnay Day financial and industrial group had become a victim of the credit crunch after talks over the weekend agreed to the appointment of administrators to some of its companies and businesses later today, and a string of asset sales. The three separate problems show that the credit crunch hasn’t gone away: ...

Later today we should see evidence to back all that talk about our strong terms of trade and rising national income. For over three years now the Reserve Bank’s commodity price index has been telling the story of soaring prices and rising volumes and returns; with various federal and state governments and a host of companies in and servicing the resources sector feeding off the boom. Now later today we will see the May trade figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The optimists are forecasting the first surplus in around six years or more, and the cautious are saying a much smaller deficit, perhaps so tiny in the scheme of things to be not very meaningful. And, after the dramatic improvement in April, and with a further improvement in June, we could get a sharply lower current account deficit for the June quarter and one better than expected ...

Confidence levels among the top end of Japanese business is at a four year low as companies forecast lower earnings for the first time in seven years. At the same time big companies say they will lift capital expenditure 2.4% over the coming financial year (which ends March 31, 2009 in Japan), compared to a forecast three months ago of a decline. But that was about the only crumb of comfort from the latest quarterly Tankan survey of manufacturer sentiment from the Bank of Japan yesterday. As with industrial production figures, the Tankan survey is considered to be perhaps the best guide to Japanese business confidence and conditions because of the way manufacturing still dominates the economy, unlike the US and Europe where services are now the main driving sector. That’s why the 5 points slide in sentiment in June from 11 in March, (the third quarterly decline in a ...