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John Lounsbury submits:Chart of the day has provided charts that have provoked much discussion in articles and Instablog posts where I have used them. This week they sent me another chart which prompted me to see (and point out to you) an interesting repeated pattern over the past 110 years.First, here is the chart with my added annotations:Complete Story »

John Lounsbury submits:From the 5-Min. Forecast comes this revealing graph: The Forecast quotes Frank Holmes at the Agora Financial Symposium in Vancouver:“Thailand, Indonesia and Columbia have been the best performing markets so far this year, and no one is talking about them.Complete Story »

John Lounsbury submits:Michael David White is a mortgage and real estate professional, as well as a Seeking Alpha contributor. In a recent article White posted a number of excellent graphs on the state of the housing market, including the following: click to enlargeComplete Story »

John Lounsbury submits:The TBTF (too big to fail) banks have learned their lesson about over leveraging, right? They are working hard to separate themselves from the gambling that got them into trouble in 2008, right?Well, think again. The 5 Min. Forecast has the following table:Complete Story »

John Lounsbury submits:Joseph J. Cassano, head of what was formerly an obscure 400 employee division of American International Group (AIG) with main offices in London, called AIG Financial Products (AIG-FP), testified today before the FCIC (Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission).The inability of AIG-FP to meet collateral calls by CDS (Credit Default Swaps) partners was a major trigger to the collapse of the company and the purchase of majority ownership of AIG by the U.S. government to prevent bankruptcy.Complete Story »

John Lounsbury submits:This week http://www.chartoftheday.com has distributed the following graph:The implication of this graph is that past experience has not seen major 1-, 2-, and 3-year downside risk for holding the indexes plotted after this point in time, although the 1932 Dow rally did show significant volatility on a monthly and quarterly basis.Complete Story »

John Lounsbury submits:Here is an astounding quote from The Washington Post article by Joel Achenbach:More trouble: A tropical wave has formed in the Caribbean and could conceivably blow through the gulf.Complete Story »

John Lounsbury submits:The latest in the unbelievable travesty of bungled actions by BP plc (BP) is documented by Andrew Morse today (Saturday) in the Wall Street Journal. The U.S. Coast Guard has released a letter sent to BP on Friday (June11) requesting that the company improve its inadequate response to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. A quote from the article: Adm. Watson gave BP 48 hours to come up with a new plan to deal with the leak, which is now believed to be spewing as much as 40,000 barrels a day into the Gulf. That estimate has risen sharply, though at the same time the company has begun to capture some of the oil on location.Complete Story »

John Lounsbury submits:Prudential PLC (PUK) bid of $30 billion for AIG's (AIG) Asian insurance business, AIA, is not going through. AIG has refused to accept the offer, which was $5 billion less than Pru originally offered. Whether another buyer can be found at the higher price or if AIG can realize $35.5 billion through an IPO remains to be seen.AIG is in a process of selling off its assets in an attempt to repay the huge bailout "investment" made by the U.S. government to prevent a bankruptcy which was feared would have pulled the pin from a global financial system hand grenade. Some believe that AIG does not have enough business value to sell to fully repay the bailout. This makes the divestiture process a race to the bottom.Complete Story »

John Lounsbury submits:We are all aware of the problems for the Euro over the last two months, but this graph from the 5-Min. Forecast really brings the facts home. The 5-Min. Forecast quotes Rob Parenteau as saying this is prelude to major banking crisis. Parenteau is predicting Euro/$ equivalency will result. He says we are on the verge of a Eurozone implosion.Complete Story »