finance
Markets Dive After Feds Shun Lehman
The Feds apparently drew the line this weekend regarding financial bailouts for dysfunctional investment banks, shunning Lehman Brothers despite its desperate pleas for help. Sleep deprived officials from the Federal Reserve and the US Treasury, along with beleaguered financial industry chieftains, were huddled in the NY Fed’s fortress-like headquarters in lower Manhattan, trying to avoid [...]
What’s in Capital One’s Wallet?
“What’s in your wallet?”, the fierce looking Viking asks at the end of the Capital One commercial. Now, Wall Street investors are asking the same question of the creator of this amusing advertising spot.
As the headlines scream about the collapse of the subprime mortgage market and the relentless meltdown of real estate prices, far too [...]
Starbucks Shot of Coffee Campaign- by Greg Strid
Starbucks is starting to feel the pressure from a
slowing economy. The Seattle-based coffee behemoth
offered coupons in several major newspapers for a
free tall (Starbucks for small) Pike Place Roast coffee,
redeemable on Wednesdays through May 28, 2008.
Why spend so much money on a nation-wide campaign,
only to offer what by today’s standards is a shot of coffee?
I keyed [...]
Struggling Banks Get Foreign Investment
It seems as though xenophobia has an inverse relationship to the ebb and flow of the stock market. As stocks prices sink under the gathering economic gloom brought on by the collapsing housing bubble, paranoia about sovereign wealth funds started to rise. These funds are made up of the accumulated savings of developing nations, such [...]
Major Home Builder Hovnanian Reels from Losses
The real estate market’s death spiral is taking a heavy toll on publicly traded home builders. Hovnanian Enterprises, the embattled and bruised New Jersey-based McMansion builder reported another staggering loss in the quarter that ended October 31. The total amount of red ink generated amounted to $469 million, or $7.42 per share. This compares to [...]
Investment Banks Lose a Bundle
What exactly constitutes a staggering loss these days? Just today, Morgan Stanley announced that it lost $3.7 billion on subprime mortgage-linked securities in the past two months – whoops.
These are actually write-downs of existing investments, and the company mentioned that their exposure to these toxic turds has been cut to a mere $6 billion. This [...]
Wall Street Relies Too Heavily on Interest Rate Cuts
A decaying housing market, deteriorating credit conditions, a sickly dollar, sky-high oil prices, two expensive and useless wars, and the looming mass-retirement of baby boomers are the main ingredients that will create the fuel for a tumble in US economic growth over the next year or two (or three or four, etc.)
Yet the party on [...]
Citigroup smacked by reckless bets
Citigroup reported a 57% decline in profits for the third quarter of 2007. Apparently it received some nasty wounds from souring fixed-income investments and sinking consumer loans. This sad quarter reflected approximately $5.9 billion of write-offs; once light was shed upon faltering securities prices and proprietary trades gone terribly wrong.
Much of the damage inflicted upon [...]
Beware the Sinking Dollar
Watch out for the declining dollar, it means that your purchasing power will decrease and your cost of living will rise sooner than you think. As the stock market gains ground lost in the early August meltdown, the US dollar continues to sink against major world currencies. The price of gold, long used to hedge [...]
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