by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street
An alternative to a restructuring in bankruptcy court.
Distressed debt exchanges are an alternative by companies to restructuring their unmanageable debts in a bankruptcy court, if they can get their creditors to agree to what are usually haircuts of some form. Distressed debt exchanges are a form of default, though they’re not always included in default rates.
But when distressed debt exchanges are included, the default rates are much higher. And the number of distressed debt exchanges has surged since the Fed started hiking interest rates. And thanks to the ultra-loose financial conditions despite the Fed’s tightening, investors are eager to work out deals.
A booming solar-power industry is driving a surge in the demand for silver, which is needed in large quantities to make photovoltaic panels.
In this week’s The Reason Roundtable, editors Matt Welch, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Nick Gillespie, and Peter Suderman conjure up a few changes they’d wish to see in the vain hope of improving U.S. presidential campaigns and consider the Biden administration’s threat to cut off arms shipments to Israel.
When my adult children were young, a favorite read-along book was called If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. It was a cute story with the premise,
What’s another trillion? What’s another five trillion or ten trillion when no one cares? It’s not like it’s real money anyway!
Fertility rates have fallen way below replacement level throughout the entire industrialized world, and this is starting to cause major problems all over the globe. Aging populations are counting on younger generations to take care of them as they get older, but younger generations are not nearly large enough to accomplish that task. Meanwhile, there aren’t enough qualified young workers in many fields to replace the expertise of older workers that are now retiring. Sadly, this is just the beginning. As I discuss in my new book entitled “Chaos”, if fertility rates continue to drop we could potentially be facing an unprecedented global population collapse in the decades ahead. This has become so evident that even the mainstream media is starting to do stories about this. In fact, an economist that was just interviewed by the Wall Street Journal is warning that “demographic winter is coming”…
A woman at the Central California Facility for Women says she witnessed the immediate aftermath of a jailhouse rape by a transgender inmate.
Gold had a historic upside breakout many weeks ago, but now silver just had its historic upside breakout as well. So the party is just getting started in the metals markets. Plus look at the shocking US interest payments on their growing debt.
You can get a really good idea how the U.S. economy is doing by watching restaurants in your area. When the economy is booming, restaurant parking lots are full and chains are feverishly establishing new locations. But when the economy is struggling, restaurants get a lot less traffic and poor performing locations get shut down. Sadly, in 2024 it appears that a “restaurant apocalypse” has started to sweep across America. Most people have very little discretionary income to spend as a result of our cost of living crisis, and that is particularly true for our young adults. Americans under the age of 40 love to eat out, but these days most of them are experiencing financial stress, and this is having an enormous impact on the restaurant industry.
The net result is America’s working class is up against the wall, maxed out.
