Bloomberg business news brings us word of General Electric’s fall in profits and reduction in forecast: April 11 (Bloomberg) — General Electric Co. dropped the most since the 1987 stock market crash after reporting an unexpected decline in profit just a month after Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Immelt assured investors 2008 earnings would be met. […]
Word from Bloomberg that Ford is likely to sell its Jaguar and Land Rover units to India’s Tata motor company: Jan. 3 (Bloomberg) — Ford Motor Co. selected Tata Motors Ltd. as the preferred bidder for Jaguar and Land Rover, putting India’s largest truckmaker in a position to take over two iconic British luxury auto […]
A very clever lady taught me that our entire financial system works on trust. When traders are buying and selling stock or securities, there is an inherent bond of trust that the transaction is what it appears to be. While we hear stories of slimy dealings on Wall Street and in the financial power houses […]
Anyone who has been following the financial news knows that banks and other large financial institutions are under a growing amount of strain given the misguided investments in speculative ventures over the past 5 years, including mortgages and exotic credit / investment packages. While chasing down what state a company like Merrill-Lynch might be tough, […]
My stalwart co-blogger, Bruce Henderson, has been waving his arms here on ASIP for roughly two years now about the coming financial crisis, with a particular focus on the subprime fiasco. Well, here’s a link to a funny, scathing, profane, yet quite accurate presentation (using stick figures) on how we got into the subprime mess […]
Today we use data from Hardtack to take a closer look at the market in Phoenix. The Phoenix metro area saw explosive growth during the housing bubble, including developments and communities built where they honestly did not make any sense. In addition many of the properties were snapped up by California “Equity Locusts” looking to […]
Once again it is time to turn loose a new set of statistics on a segment of our nation’s housing market courtesy of Hardtack. Hardtack now has been collecting data for about a year, and some trends are clearly identifiable in the data. Last time we were looking at details of the declines (and some […]
I am on the road for the beginning of this week, but I wanted to post some overview graphs of what is happening in the Sacramento housing market. As you can see there is quite a drop in the asking price per square foot listed in the MLS. You can click the chart above for […]
Congress has just passed the president’s stimulus package, and the increase of the conforming loan limit to include some “Jumbo” loans is in it. Once again the ID credits go to Professor Kevin Depew at Minianville: Congress gave final approval Thursday night to an economic stimulus package that would send government payments to more than […]
The Fed’s Mistakes – How Deep In It Now?
In a recent private discussion thread, one of the participants cited our current problems as a shortage of liquidity (available cash) brought on by failed sub-prime mortgage lending. We are not a liquidity crisis, but a debt crisis. The banks have some idea of how bad the problem really is, but most people don’t know […]
Read More