Jonathan Biggerstaff's Articles

Will China Overtake the United States as the World's Largest Economy? In the United States today, we hear a lot of talk about China. Why? Because China is growing, and fast. Americans are proud o...
Stocks (Feb 5th, 10)

  Here's a chart of the monthly trend of the S&P 500. You can see the march lows and the subsequent surge upward. The white line is a trend line, measuring the pace of our rally. You can s...
Investing (Feb 2nd, 10)

Previously we explained how the underwriting guidelines of lenders on main-street are merely a reflection of the kinds of bonds the secondary market wants to purchase.  Also how the advent of cre...
Banking (Nov 4th, 09)

Previously we discussed what a derivative is and, more specifically, what a credit default swap (CDS) is and how they work. We saw that credit default swaps are actually comparable to simple insurance...
Banking (Nov 3rd, 09)

With our financial system in disarray, it seems that no one will give us a straight answer on what caused it. My goal in the next few blogs is to explain specifically what happened during the econom...
Banking (Oct 27th, 09)