Fed President William Poole in ref to the housing collapse said "There is no new lesson here". Poole is wrong because he does not understand what the problem is. The problem is a conflict of interest by the rating agencies in conjunction wi
Investors will withdraw $500 billion(245 pounds,355 billion euros) a quarter of the asset base -- from hedge funds in the next year, leading to a collapse of a "large number" of hedge funds. So predicts Giles Conway-Gordon, managing partne
The Wall Street Journal took a poll that claimed Republicans grow skeptical of Free Trade. Unfortunately, the poll questions were so biased as to be useless. Nonetheless the WSJ is probably right. Candidates from both parties are taking shots at free
There have been 3 consecutive months of fewer import containers y-o-y. The biggest decline was at the Port of LA, the largest port for goods from China. With that backdrop it should not be surprising that US retail sales in Sept rose at the slowest p
Portland's condo demand once appeared insatiable. Now, shelved projects and stalled construction dot the city. "No reason to panic" say real estate insiders. Portland is immune from the downturn. The same thing was said about Florida. W
The toll of big bank losses from the credit squeeze toppled $18 bn on Friday after Merrill Lynch and Washington Mutual revealed heavy damage inflicted by financial market turmoil. Merrill Lynch said it would take a $5bn writedown and record a
Fillmore bought the place for $329,000 in July 2005; the peak of the boom. Since listing the house at $317,000 a few months ago, she has dropped the price to $289,000 and is hoping for her luck to change as she cannot afford to pay the mortgage on an
is in heaven. "This is not a buyer's market, this is a buyer's paradise," said Robert Neal as he waited for a foreclosure auction to start in Detroit. Neal wants family homes with a market value of up to $90,000 and will pay up to $
Topps Meat Co LLC announced it was going out of business, crushed by the recall of 21.7 million pounds of beef linked to 30 cases of E. coli-related illness. "In one week we have gone from the largest U.S. manufacturer of frozen hamburgers to a
The September jobs report was weak but certainly not a disaster. The baseline number was +110,000 but 37,000 of those were govt jobs. In addition 33,000 goods producing jobs were lost. 18,000 of those were manufacturing. With this jobs report the Fed
The key to what happens at the October FOMC meeting is likely to depend on jobs. But Bernanke has a penchant for throwing "surprise parties". Can he surprise again over concerns about the dollar or simply to try and show he is not beholden
The best way to not drown in debt is to live well within your means. The #1 rule is don't buy stuff you cannot afford. Think twice about that SUV. Have a Years' Worth of Living Expenses in Cash to protect against loss of a job. Cash is not tr
"The housing bubble has burst," said Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital in Darien, Conn. "Prices are going to collapse, and sales are going to fall through the floor."
The cost of living is rising so analysts are telling people to Aim High in their investments to compensate. This is just what the Fed wants everyone to do to avoid a recession. Herding behavior (the greater fool theory) is massively in play. Aim High
The IRS has setup a website to help people with foreclosures. That should be enough to tell anyone what the trend is expected to be. The new Tax Forgiveness bill has some interesting provisions related to home rentals, even room rentals. The net effe
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British banks are gorging on cheap credit by the ECB, fearing stock market punishment if the UK press finds out they borrowed money from the BOE. This has an interesting side effect of providing support to the British pound when arguably it should be
The House passed the Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act of 2007. The NAHB, NAR, and MBA all lined up in support. But unseen consequences of the bill may make them think twice in years to come. Legislation piles on top of legislation. Instead, the e
Citigroup Inc., the nation's largest financial institution, warned its 3rd-quarter earnings are likely to decline 60%, as it takes more than $3 billion in writedowns for securities backed by underperforming mortgages and loans tied to corporate b
For the first time since 1995, the U.S. bond market is rallying on the assumption that the Federal Reserve has relegated inflation to a secondary concern because the central bank views a recession as a much greater threat to the economy.
U.S. stocks rose this week to complete the steepest September advance since 1998 as the Federal Reserve's interest-rate cut helped energy and raw-material companies lead the market's recovery from a summer rout.
Federal regulators closed NetBank, a $2.5 billion thrift based in Georgia partly due to significant mortgage-related losses the company sustained in 2006 and 2007. NetBank marked the largest bank to fail since since the early 1990s, which marked the