Search results for credit crisis
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Posted
Aug 26 2008, 10:57 AM
by
Minyanville
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
The slumping housing market continues to take a bite out of home improvement - and there’s no immediate relief in sight.
Consumers are pressed by high gasoline and food prices, leaving less cash to upgrade the kitchen or bathroom.
Home Depot and Lowe’s have already taken a hit.
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Posted
Sep 23 2008, 12:10 PM
by
Minyanville
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Armed with stronger backing from federal banking regulators, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are going shopping for cash.
Yesterday, the last bastions of Wall Street independence announced plans to transform into more traditional banks, subjecting themselves to deeper regulatory scrutiny and tighter limits on leverage. The move also allowed them to pursue customer deposits, a more stable funding source than the recently chaotic money markets.
This morning, Bloomberg reported the 2 firms are already on the prowl, combing the banking landscape for deposits they can snatch up on the cheap. This may seem odd, since Goldman and Morgan were fighting for their lives just a few short days ago - and Morgan was desperately searching for an infusion of capital.
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Posted
Feb 02 2009, 04:08 AM
by
Douglas McIntyre
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Some communicable diseases can be traced back to what medical researchers call "patient zero", the first carrier of an illness and often someone who has no symptoms. One of the most notorious examples of this is "Typhoid Mary", Mary Mallon, who is alleged to have spread typhoid fever in New York City and its suburbs between 1901 and 1906.
The global recession has a "patient zero", a single person who set off the series of events which may lead the economy into its greatest downturn since The Great Depression and, by some estimates, push 50 million people around the world out of jobs this year, according to The International Labour Organisation.
"Patient zero" bought a house in Stockton, California, in 2003 after getting a subprime mortgage. He defaulted on that mortgage 39 months later.
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Posted
Mar 09 2009, 04:05 AM
by
Douglas McIntyre
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
The U.S. is calling for other nations to put more money into their credit and financial systems to help pull the world out of a deepening recession.
One of the problems is that many countries may not have access to the capital they would need to pull their own weight.
According to Lawrence Summers, President Barack Obama's chief economic adviser, the urgent need for a short-term spending increase by governments temporarily overrides the longer-term goal of fixing the global imbalances economists belief caused the financial crisis, the Financial times reports.
It's not clear that the United Kingdom and EU nations can print money the way that the US Treasury can because they may not have the same access to global capital markets.
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Posted
Mar 18 2009, 10:48 AM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
 More people are giving up on their homes, choosing to stop paying the mortgage instead of scraping by and running up credit card debt to make ends meet.
The reason? It can take more than a year for a bank to seize a home if the owner stops paying the mortgage, Reuters reports. And while an owner's credit will take a hit, that's one year of saving money to start over. And most lenders won't sue borrowers for breaching a contract. Experts worry that as more people abandon their mortgages, the economy will suffer as home values continue to plummet. That will push more homes underwater, which could cause more people to walk away. And so on.
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Posted
Mar 20 2009, 03:45 AM
by
Douglas McIntyre
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
In many large American cities, office buildings sit half finished in financial districts. Huge cranes still sit next to some of them. If the construction on a site was stopped, there is nothing left beyond a skyscraper skeleton and a security fence to keep vandals out.
As law firms, investment banks, car companies, retailers and other businesses cut jobs and move to cheaper offices, the commercial real estate industry is collapsing with astonishing speed. Few unfinished buildings are erected with cash from the developers. Banks put the money up for the physical location and structure, and perhaps even the rent from tenants, as security deposits in most cases. The land is no longer worth much. The buildings are half empty or unfinished and tenants are leaving, and, in many cases, defaulting on their leases. Lawsuits demanding payment of those obligations are long and expensive. As often as not, the former tenant could not afford to pay a judgment anyway.
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Posted
Mar 25 2009, 04:12 AM
by
Douglas McIntyre
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
The transformation of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner will be remembered for its speed and unexpectedness. Just four weeks ago, on the heels of a failed presentation of the Administration’s plan to help shore up banks, he was considered indecisive and incompetent. There were calls for him to step down until the President voiced support for his Treasury Secretary on a television talk show.
Geithner left his whipping-boy costume in the closet when he presented the specifics of his plan to get the private sector to participate in buying toxic assets. The financial world was focused on the reaction to his speech and, before he had even given it, the markets began a furious rally. Once he stepped away from the microphones, the buying of equities accelerated.
Geithner’s success in convincing the world that hedge funds would use government money to buy bank paper of questionable value was all the more extraordinary because so few experts believe the plan has any chance of working. It may be that the markets have been through such a long cycle of hopelessness that they are ready to grasp at any straw.
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Posted
Apr 02 2009, 04:23 AM
by
Douglas McIntyre
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
What if the G-20 is like the stock market four weeks ago? No one thought the market would go up over 20% in fewer than five weeks. Many people did not think it would go up at all.
The expectations for Thursday's G-20 meeting are so low that a great deal of positive action may come out of it, depending on whether the analysts looking at the agreements think regulation and stimulus are the tonics for the global recession.
It would be surprising if the G-20 did not push for more regulations of global financial firms. The banks and brokerage houses are easy to blame, and the blaming has the benefit of being accurate. They created the financial instruments that helped bring the global economy to its knees and sold them to institutions all over the world. The world is going to be hell for financial firms operating in the largest nations. They will be regulated at unprecedented levels.
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Posted
Apr 07 2009, 03:46 AM
by
Douglas McIntyre
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
The Congressional Budget Office has issued its estimate for the deficit created in the federal government’s fiscal first half, which ended on March 31. The number was $953 billion. Depending on how the TARP outlays are accounted for, the number could be less.
While most experts expected outlays for the period to be higher, what was an unpleasant surprise is that receipts to the Treasury fell $160 billion from the same period a year ago. Receipts from individuals were off by $76 billion and income from corporations was down $73 billion. Miscellaneous fees made up the balance.
The concern that springs from the numbers is not so much that spending will continue to increase, because that will be a product of the new budget and stimulus packages and any additional TARP funds which Congress might approve. The really massive damage to the deficit will likely come on the income side of the ledger and that draws into question, once again, how much money the government can borrow.
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Posted
Apr 13 2009, 04:08 AM
by
Douglas McIntyre
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
There's no end to the lengths banks that received TARP funds will go to make Congress and the public unhappy with the program and its results.
Executive pay and perks started the process of eroding confidence in how well TARP money has been used. Now, the greed of the banks -- reflected in the way they treat customers -- will become part of the debate.
According to The Wall Street Journal, a rash of complaints about increasing interest fees and rates is spurring a committee overseeing the banking bailout to investigate the lending practices of banks that received public funds.
It seems that banks including Citigroup (C) and Bank of America (BAC) are charging amounts for customer transactions that might be considered unreasonable if part of the TARP’s goals are to ease credit. Add that to the fact that the banks are hoarding much of the money they received to improve their balance sheets, and the public’s confidence in the bailout programs falls even more.
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