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Click below to read
"Gold 36,000," a special GRANT'S bulletin.
A reaction to the tumultuous events of last week.
--Available only online.

GRANT'S INTEREST RATE OBSERVER
Vol.26,No.14

Bearish on the biggest monoline - It's the U.S. government that insures the bank deposits and guarantees the mortgages and stands behind...

No bottom, no fish - Bank stocks have rallied but not the mortgage-backed securities that dragged them down in the first place. A new-low list of MBS prices, if such existed, would certainly fill many of the new, downsized pages of our leading daily newspapers....

Remember India? - With the Indian stock market and currency down by 30.5% and 8.5%, respectively, in the year to date, investors are rewriting one of the world's great growth stories. Provisional new title: "Get me out." Back when the world's biggest democracy could do no...

One for the team - The credit crisis has claimed many a victim. That the Federal Reserve would be among them must count as one of the strangest, and most unsettling, turns of the...

GRANT'S INTEREST RATE OBSERVER
Vol.26, No.10

Hostages to house prices  -  The chance to invest at a knockdown price in a humbled blue chip doesn't come along every day. It presents itself, almost by definition, when people are too frightened to avail themselves of it. In general, fears pass. It's an investor's low entry point that keeps on giving.
    Now under way is a reappraisal of . . .


Still at the altar -  It now may seem incredible, but professional investors--reputable people, many of them--once acquired public companies at big premiums over their publicly quoted market prices. They bought them whole, like cantaloupes, borrowing most of the consideration. The lenders, being half asleep, advanced the funds at low interest rates and without the customary creditor's legal protections. Then came the mortgage mess, followed by the generalized credit contraction. All at once, the "private-equity bid," as it was fondly known, disappeared. . . .


Riddle by e-mail  -  John Johnston (a.k.a. "JJ"), a New York energy and precious metals adviser and paid-up subscriber, submits a letter to the editor, e e cummings-style. . .

    "Signs of a spring thaw in bond markets abound, as spreads have tightened and new issuance has soared. Global bond issuance in April was $1.1 trillion, a 10-month high, according to Lehman Brothers, and only the fourth $1 trillion-plus month since 1995. . . .Meanwhile, corporate bond spreads have fallen since the middle of March. . .Spreads are tightening at the same time that defaults are beginning to climb. . .S&P reports 28 defaults so far in 2008, affecting $18.4 billion of debt, compared to 22 defaults in all of 2007. . ."Our old friend [COMPANY] hasn't defaulted under the weight of its debt, but it continues to groan (Grant's, May 2). First-quarter results, out this week, showed. . .


Calling all bond bears  -  No brass bands greeted the recent debut of a pair of exchange-traded funds intended to prosper in a Treasury-bond bear market. Precious little money did, either. . . .


'Inflation' by any other name  - Prices of goods imported into the United States spurted . . .between March and April and . . .in the 12 months to April, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said Tuesday. The year-over-year surge was the biggest "since the index was first published in 1982," Bloomberg News reported. Nineteen eighty-two was the year in which the 1946-1981 bond bear market was finally put to sleep.
    It would be a fitting statistical marker for a new bond bear market if . . .