Free Republic

The warnings are getting louder. Is anybody listening? For months, I have been documenting on my website how the global financial system is absolutely primed for a crisis, and now some of the most important financial institutions in the entire world are warning about the exact same thing. For example, this week I was stunned to see that the Telegraph had published an article with the following ominous headline: “$3 trillion corporate credit crunch looms as debtors face day of reckoning, says IMF“. And actually what we are heading for would more accurately be described as a “credit freeze” or...

Over the coming months, I believe we could see an economic meltdown at least six times the size of the 2007 subprime mortgage meltdown... The next financial collapse, already on our radar screen, will not come from hedge funds or home mortgages. It will come from junk bonds, especially energy-related and emerging-market corporate debt. The Financial Times recently estimated that the total amount of energy-related corporate debt issued from 2009-2014 for exploration and development is over $5 trillion. Meanwhile, the Bank for International Settlements recently estimated that the total amount of emerging-market dollar-denominated corporate debt is over $9 trillion. Energy-sector...

It’s not just the stock market we have to worry about. It’s also the bond market. For the past five years, U.S. corporations have been living in a financial paradise. Interest rates have been on the floor. Wages have been flat. Companies have been able to lay off workers and slash costs. Profits have skyrocketed to record levels. And they’ve spent almost nothing on new capital equipment, either. And what effect has this had? In 2007, at the peak of the last credit mania, U.S. nonfinancial corporations owed $7.2 trillion according to data compiled by the U.S. Federal Reserve. Today?...

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Everyone knows America has too much debt. What they don’t know is that things are getting better, not worse. Little by little, our economy is reducing its debt burden, slowly repairing the damage caused by 10, 20 or 30 years of excess. If you want to know why economic growth has been so tepid, here’s your answer. Four years after the storm hit, the economy is still deleveraging. And it’s very hard for any economy to grow when everyone is focused on increasing their savings.

When the Mayans envisioned the world coming to an end in 2012 — at least in the Hollywood telling — they didn’t count junk bonds among the perils that would lead to worldwide disaster. Maybe they should have, because 2012 also is the beginning of a three-year period in which more than $700 billion in risky, high-yield corporate debt begins to come due, an extraordinary surge that some analysts fear could overload the debt markets. With huge bills about to hit corporations and the federal government around the same time, the worry is that some companies will have trouble getting...

Cost of insuring corporate debt soars By Robert Cookson and Sarah O'Connor in London Mon Jan 21, 2:35 PM ET The cost of protecting corporate debt against default surged in Europe on Monday as fears intensified over the fate of global bond insurers and the $2,400bn of debt they guarantee. ADVERTISEMENT The credit market was in its blackest mood since the height of the summer's subprime panic after Ambac, one of the biggest bond insurers, or so-called monolines, was downgraded by Fitch Ratings on Friday. Smaller insurer ACA - which has been slashed to junk - managed on Sunday to...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - AOL Time Warner Inc. is expected to write off several billion dollars -- on top of the record $54 billion charge it took last year -- increasing the strain on its balance sheet, analysts and investors say. The world's largest media company said in October it was probable it would take a "substantial" noncash goodwill impairment charge in the fourth quarter to reflect the reduced value of its America Online unit since its 2001 merger with Time Warner. While AOL Time Warner executives have said debt covenants would not be affected by the noncash charge, accounting...