Rumors have been circulating for some time about the health of French banks. Those rumors play a huge part in the recent surge in worries about the creditworthiness of the French state. After all, the Irish banks came pretty close to bankrupting Ireland. The British banks knocked a huge hole in the British government balance [...]

Stop press. The biggest news of the month is that Germany’s most recent bond auction failed horribly in attracting buyers.  Some 39% of the bonds available for sale were left unsold and had to be mopped up by the Bundesbank. This is extraordinary news. It means that contagion has now spread from Greece, to Ireland and Portugal, [...]

We reported recently that Obama’s ex-Goldman buddy, Jon Corzine the head of MF Global, seemed to have lost some $700 million. Problem was, MF Global seemed to have lost $700 million of their clients’ money. Which is a little odd, given that it’s illegal not to keep client money separate from the firm’s own accounts. Illegal [...]

You’ll recall, I’m sure, that the newly formed M. Feierstein Ratings Agency broke the news that France has lost its AAA rating. Although we’re a newly formed agency and, if you want to be pedantic about it, we have only ever issued one rating, nevertheless we like to think of ourselves as a market leader. [...]

Planet Ponzi – the massive build-up of debt, the total loss of political transparency – had caused multiple casualties across the world. The failure of banks, the huge rise in government debt, the failure of business, the loss of jobs, the pressure on real incomes – all these things stem from the same dark causes. [...]

Everyone in the entire world knows that European banks are in trouble … except, you’d think, the European banks themselves. After all, as this comment by Jonathan Weil of Bloomberg shows, stockmarkets value the average Euro bank at just 44% of book value. That is, the accounts of those European banks show a figure for [...]

Yeah, we know. Food’s expensive. Gas is expensive. You can’t even remember when you last had a wage rise. The job market is dire. But Planet Ponzi is all about taking positive action to help yourself, no matter what conditions are like. So here’s our formula for success – one pioneered by Nancy Pelosi, though [...]

Mervyn King of the Bank of England has one main job: to keep inflation at or close to 2%. This week – Tuesday – we’re going to see a new set of consumer price inflation figures and they’re not going to be anything like 2%. My bet is that we’re going to see inflation race [...]

OK, I’ll fess up. None of the ratings agencies has yet formally downgraded France. But the Planet Ponzi Ratings Agency (established Nov 4, 2011) has formally rated France at A+. Given that we’re a newish agency, we’ve struggled hard to find the positives. And, um, they’re there all right. France makes nice wine. It has [...]