Search results for interest rates
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Posted
Apr 17 2008, 03:28 PM
by
Charley Blaine
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Google shareholders had to be thrilled by the stock market's reaction to the company's first-quarter earnings report on Thursday afternoon.
And nobody could have been happier than Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Each saw the value of his stake jump about $2.2 billion in less than an hour as the stock jumped 17% to $526.50.
The stock took off after the company beat Wall Street estimates on revenue, net income and earnings per share for the first quarter and crushed just about all concerns that Google's business might be peaking.
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Posted
Jan 06 2009, 05:22 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
This post comes from partner blog Blueprint for Financial Prosperity.
Credit unions exist to help their members. Commercial banks exist to enrich their shareholders.
You read that right. That's why credit unions often have better interest rates on both loans and deposits. Commercial banks are businesses. Their sole purpose is to figure out how to make more money from customers (you). Interest rates on accounts are often very low (or nonexistent), and they always try to sell you new products.
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Posted
Mar 16 2008, 07:37 PM
by
Charley Blaine
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
The proposed sale of Bear Stearns on Sunday to JPMorgan Chase for $2 a share, or $236 million, will keep litigation lawyers busy for years as enraged shareholders seek to recover anything from the disaster.
The losses from Bear Stearns' demise are shocking, so shocking that Asian and Australian stocks tumbled on the news. The dollar was fallling. Crude oil jumped over $111 a barrel, and European shares were expected to open lower as was the U.S. stock market.
From a peak price of $171.52 in January 2007, Bear Stearns managed to lose 98.8% of its peak market value of $20.2 billion in less than 15 months, all because the company bet everything that the housing market and the markets for securities backed by subprime mortgages wouldn't break. It did
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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
May 20 2009, 03:35 AM
by
Douglas McIntyre
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
The housing market and housing starts are still facing deep and intractable problems. Mortgage rates may be low, but bank standards for home loans are higher. No financial firm wants to be stuck owning more houses that have been foreclosed upon. Developers won’t build what they cannot sell.
Homes are also less likely to sell in the future as unemployment rises toward 10%. If joblessness goes into the double digits and stays there for several quarters, a recovery of the housing market will be nearly impossible.
The only group that seems to have confidence in a recovery in housing prices is vulture investors who are taking advantage of home values that have dropped 50% to 60% in some markets. According to The Wall Street Journal, the vultures often go house-to-house looking for the best prospects. The paper writes that “some are spending their days looking for deals in far-flung suburbs and staking out courthouse auctions.”
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Posted
Dec 19 2008, 03:41 PM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
A story at USA Today -- "Mortgage rates at 37-year low: Average 5.19% for 30 years" -- disrupted our partner blogger J.D. Roth's vacation reverie. All of a sudden, J.D., who's not an impulsive guy, is thinking about refinancing his home. He checked Bankrate.com and found a low rate of 5.085%, which would reduce J.D.'s payments to $1,111 and save him $275 a month. But wait. It could get even better, he wrote in a post at Get Rich Slowly.
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Posted
Apr 03 2008, 05:53 PM
by
Jon Markman
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Bummed that you missed the skyrocketing advance of credit card vendor Visa when it debuted as a stock last month? The 50% move higher in the shares in the first few days paid for a whole lot of shopping sprees among shareholders, you can be sure -- and they could pay with cash, not plastic.
Well fret no more, because this crazy market is giving you another shot right now with the shares of the company behind a different credit card issuer: American Express. And the author of a brilliant new book about buying super-discounted stocks says this is one idea you should definitely not leave home without.
Vitaliy Katsenelson, a Denver portfolio manager whose cagey Active Value Investing was published last year, says Amex is one of the “cleanest” financial stocks you can buy right now, not to mention one of the cheapest. Its value is down, he says, because it is mistakenly lumped in both with banks and with companies that will suffer in a recession. He says that, to the contrary, Amex is in the virtually the same business as Visa and Mastercard, whose own shares are up a stunning 406% since they debuted in mid-2006: They just take fees from merchants and earn interest on cardholders’ balances.
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Posted
May 07 2009, 01:57 PM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
We've been hard on the credit card companies for changing the rules in the middle of the game -- upping interest rates and dropping credit limits on customers they used to value. (They're the ones who carry a balance and make minimum payments, thus fattening the companies' bottom line.)
But we didn't explore another side of the equation -- consumers who abuse the privilege. "Free From Broke" does in a post called "Credit cards don't suck, you suck!"
"Sounds harsh, I know," FFB says. "But a lot of people who have credit card problems need to take a deep breath and look at themselves." He proceeds to list things people hate about credit cards and explain why he thinks those gripes are misguided.
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Posted
Jul 06 2009, 10:23 AM
by
Catherine Holahan
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Is $12.8 trillion not enough? In an effort to pull the country from the brink of depression, the U.S. government has already spent, lent or pledged that amount on stimulus packages, bank and insurer bailouts, auto rescues and U.S. Treasury purchases.
But some are still calling on Congress and other rich nations to do more. On July 8, world leaders meeting in Italy for the G-8 summit expressed support for additional stimulus spending, should the need arise.
The call follows comments made early this week by Vice President Joe Biden indicating that the U.S. could seek a second stimulus package in the future. In an interview with ABC on Sunday, Biden said that the government misjudged the depth of the recession. He also said that, though President Barack Obama's administration is not seeking a second stimulus package now, it could do so in the future.
The reason for the seemingly incredible call for more public funds is the unprecedented pullback in consumer spending. The U.S. economy runs on personal consumption. In recent years, consumer spending has accounted for about 70% of U.S. gross domestic product. In the past two years, however, the consumer spending engine has stalled due to high unemployment, stagnant wages, tight credit and more than 14 trillion in paper losses due to steep declines in property values and market investments.
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Posted
Apr 03 2009, 03:22 PM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
Credit card companies are spending lots of money to tell you they're on your side.
Peter at Bible Money Matters has noticed the trend: Discover is pushing its cards as "a built-in easy-to-do budget and spending tracker," he said. He also got a mailing from Chase touting savings he could enjoy by using his rewards card, like discounts at Chase's online shopping portal.
We get irritated by the commercials claiming the card companies will bend over backward to help if you're having trouble paying your bills. (In all fairness, credit card companies do help some struggling customers with a variety of methods, like a temporary reduction in interest, to get them to keep paying. The companies don't want to write off the debt.)
Peter isn't buying all the feel-good stuff. He writes: "The credit card companies are not your friend. They just want your money."
Let's review some of the card companies' recent attempts to reduce their risk by assessing more interest and fees or getting rid of customers they no longer want. In the process, these companies, many of them recipients of bailout money, are divesting themselves of any public good will:
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