I was leafing through some recent Bloomberg articles and noticed this running thread connecting them: hubris, decisions based on false data, inertia, things like that. It wouldn't be hard to find dozens more pieces just like it in the press, but o [More...]

Oil prices have been falling.

This is no surprise to us here at The Automatic Earth, as our position is that the 2008 price peak will stand for a very long time, and that the rise from the 2009 low has been a counter-trend ra [More...]

Oh come on, leave the girl alone already. First off, all those people talking about a solution for the eurozone need to finally understand there ain't no such thing. And whatever slim chance of a solution the most optimistic - delusional - among t [More...]

Over the past few days, Henry Blodget at Business Insider posted a number of graphs, here and here, which depict something about the US economy that everybody knows to some extent or another, but that most of us won't have let thoroughly sink in. [More...]

The results of the "independent" Spanish bank stress test by Oliver Wyman Ltd, just out, indicate that the banks will need €62 billion ($78 billion) in a worst case scenario (a 6.5% GDP shrinkage and a 60% home price plunge). Since €100 billion wa [More...]

The ending of extend-and-pretend is ushering in a new era of fear and uncertainty which is rapidly evolving into the next phase of the on-going credit crunch.

It is becoming clearer to many that the problems run much deeper than they had perce [More...]