Search results for credit crisis
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Posted
Oct 21 2008, 08:28 AM
by
Charley Blaine
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Being a billionaire isn't as much fun as it used to be. Just ask investor Kirk Kerkorian, the investor and casino magnate.
Kerkorian plunked down $1 billion in Ford Motor in the spring, ending with a 6.4% stake in the automaker. In a bit more than four months, he's seen more than two thirds of the value of that investment vanish as Ford and all the automakers have struggled with high gas prices and the crummy economy.
Monday, he said "no mas." In a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, he said he sold 7.3 million shares of Ford at $2.43 a share. And he may sell the rest.
Here's how the math works.
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Posted
Sep 25 2008, 03:14 PM
by
Charley Blaine
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Let me start by stating that CNBC's Jim Cramer can be loud, obnoxious, annoying and even -- as he would admit -- occasionally boorish.
His rant a year ago on how he thought the Federal Reserve was making a horrible mistake when it raised rates in the face of a global credit crunch is the stuff of legend. (Which is why CNBC plays it over and over and over again.)
But Cramer is a very smart guy, and he's offering the best explanation I've seen on why Congress and the White House should pass a financial rescue plan.
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Posted
Apr 07 2009, 02:42 PM
by
James Dlugosch
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
This post comes from partner site InvestorPlace.com.
Will Capital One (COF) receive the death penalty for past transgressions?
Given the fallout in the financial sector, such an outcome should be expected by investors. Like Countrywide in the mortgage market, Capital One was a leader in aggressive consumer credit lending.
We all know the outcome for that aggressiveness at Countrywide. Now it seems that many are predicting credit debt to be the next shoe to drop in this financial crisis. If so, the future of Capital One may be in jeopardy.
At the end of last year, I put Capital One on my list of Top 10 Stocks to Avoid in 2009 for just that reason. Considering shares started the year at $31.89 and now sit at $12.81, I would say that was a rather astute move.
Where does Capital One go from here?
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Posted
Dec 12 2008, 03:42 AM
by
Douglas McIntyre
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
With Republicans in the Senate thwarting an auto company bailout bill, General Motors has decided to play its trump card. It has hired bankruptcy counsel.
According to The Wall Street Journal, "GM management recently tapped bankruptcy veteran Harvey Miller of the New York law firm, Weil Gotshal & Manges LP, to handle what would be one of the largest and most controversial filings in U.S. history."
With the bill to send the Big Three checks dead and in the process of being buried, getting advice for Chapter 11 is only prudent. GM should have done it weeks ago when the company's cash was not so low. It would have made operating under court protection much easier.
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Posted
Nov 06 2008, 04:01 AM
by
Douglas McIntyre
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Every industry has its blue-chip think tank. In the case of cars it is the Center for Automotive Research, which has come out with a new and disturbing study.
Based on forecasts which look at The Big Three, the foreign competition making cars in the U.S., auto parts companies, and other related industries, a collapse of the U.S. auto industr
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Posted
Aug 10 2009, 03:48 AM
by
Douglas McIntyre
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
 There are so few profit centers that banks can count on anymore.
Many of the largest financial firms are still losing money on derivatives. Consumer credit default rates are rising. Commercial real estate may be Armageddon for some banks. The only recent bright spot for financial firms last quarter was investment banking. That may be short-lived if the stock and bond markets stop advancing.
One thing the banks can count on is the fact that many consumers will overdraw their accounts. This is probably a more frequent occurrence during a recession when money is tight. Data from Moebs Services which recently appeared in the Financial Times shows that U.S. banks will collect roughly $38 billion in overdraft penalties this year.
That should make up for a lot of their losses from other sources. The Moebs data show that people with the lowest credit scores are those who pay the lion’s share of the fees. This cost of banking undoubtedly adds to their financial stress.
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Posted
Mar 02 2009, 09:23 AM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
American International Group (AIG) made it into record books Monday as it reported losing $61.7 billion in the last three months of 2008. That's the largest quarterly loss in the history of U.S. companies.
How did AIG, the world's biggest insurer, blow through that much money? Mostly, it came from big writedowns as the company paid the price for getting cozy with toxic assets and risky transactions like credit-default swaps. And yet the help keeps coming. AIG is getting another $30 billion bailout -- its fourth from the government -- because its failure would have a damaging impact across the world's financial system.
The taxpayers now own 80% of AIG, the most crippled of all the nation's financial institutions, writes the New York Times' Joe Nocera in a fascinating column on the company. To say AIG was shady doesn't come close. The company was reckless, exploiting loopholes and abusing the system for its own gain -- and, Nocera writes, it's being kept alive precisely because it behaved so badly.
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Posted
May 22 2008, 10:30 AM
by
Jon Markman
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
It’s a sad commentary on our times when the strongest growth in the financial sector is coming from companies that specialize in debt collection. But what do we expect when wages are flat, inflation is rising, mortgages aren’t being paid and people are forced to decide being paying their Best Buy bills or buying gasoline for the commute to work.
We’ve got something like 6,100 debt collection companies in the United States now, and they are rapidly adding more Americans to their speed-dial lists. In the past year, companies in the industry have bought something like $140 billion worth of delinquent debts, which is more than double the amount they bought as recently as eight years ago.
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Posted
May 14 2009, 08:18 AM
by
Andrew Rosenbaum
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
What happened to our economic recovery? Recovery was supposed to be right around the corner, right?
The Federal Reserve and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner keep telling us that things will definitely get better soon -- the Fed says growth should start in the third quarter of this year.
But the most important indicators of that recovery are going in the wrong direction. Retail sales are down. The housing market is stagnant. Mortgage rates have moved higher.
Where are those "green shoots" of recovery that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is always talking about? Have they gone brown?
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Posted
Jan 28 2009, 07:10 AM
by
Minyanville
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Now may be the time to quit smoking. And drinking. Gambling, too.
As a way to shore up their decimated budgets, many state governments are playing vice cop, hiking "sin taxes" on the traditional American pastimes listed above. Sin taxes are nothing new -- consider Prohibition as the ultimate example -- but there's another round of them on the way.
A unique dynamic is at play: People turn to their vices for comfort during dire economic times -- and yet, in such times, states balance their budgets on the backs of smokers and drinkers (which is a considerable portion of this country).
And states are not the only ones getting in on the act.
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