Archive for the 'Economy' Category
Personal Bankruptcies Soar 33%
February 2nd, 2009Via: MSN: Personal bankruptcies surged to more than 1 million filings in the United States in 2008 — the most since a rewrite of bankruptcy laws went into effect in 2005. Filings of Chapter 7 and Chapter 13 bankruptcies rose 33% in 2008 as the economy worsened, according to data from U.S. bankruptcy courts and […]
Folding Dealers Shock Car Buyers with Unpaid Liens
February 2nd, 2009Via: AP: The national wave of auto dealership closures has come crashing down on thousands of people who are on the hook for used-car loans that dealers were supposed to absolve. When a car buyer still owes money on a vehicle he is trading in, the dealer promises to pay off the outstanding loan, then […]
Violent Unrest Rocks China as Financial Crisis Hits
February 2nd, 2009Via: Times Online: Bankruptcies, unemployment and social unrest are spreading more widely in China than officially reported, according to independent research that paints an ominous picture for the world economy. The research was conducted for The Sunday Times over the last two months in three provinces vital to Chinese trade – Guangdong, Zhejiang and Jiangsu. […]
Questions, Questions: Gold, Aussie and Kiwi Dollars
February 1st, 2009WARNING: This is not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any financial instrument. I’ve received some emails from Aussies and Kiwis who are thinking about buying gold. In summary: Hold off for now. I looked at the U.S. Dollar Index, but that thing is so blurry, I can’t make much sense out of it. […]
FDIC Friday: Three More Down
February 1st, 2009I stopped posting FDIC Friday stories because the amounts of money involved with most of them make for noise level events in the scheme of things. I picked an arbitrary threshold of $1 billion or more in total deposits for a bank failure to warrant a mention here. But this week, we have three failures. […]
Here Comes The BARF
February 1st, 2009Via: Forbes: Why creating a Bad Asset Repository Fund for Wall Street’s toxic assets could make banking even sicker. First there was TARP. Get ready for BARF. They haven’t named it that yet, but calling a federal “bad bank” to soak up toxic assets the Bad Asset Repository Fund would be truth in advertising at […]
The End: Michael Lewis Revisits Wall Street Swindling
February 1st, 2009This piece makes a great epilogue for my 2006 Wall Street Chop Shop essay. Via: Portfolio: Now 36, Daniel grew up a lower-middle-class kid in Queens. One of his first jobs, as a junior accountant at Arthur Andersen, was to audit Salomon Brothers’ books. “It was shocking,” he says. “No one could explain to me […]
Could Hyperinflation Happen Again?
January 31st, 2009WARNING: This is not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any financial instrument. They can’t bring themselves to write the word gold. But keep the naughty four letter word in mind as you read the last paragraph of this piece. Via: Morgan Stanley: Against this backdrop, could hyperinflation or high inflation happen again? Possibly […]
General Motors to Invest $1 Billion in Brazil Operations; Money to Come from U.S. Bailout
January 31st, 2009Via: Latin American Herald Tribune: General Motors plans to invest $1 billion in Brazil to avoid the kind of problems the U.S. automaker is facing in its home market, said the beleaguered car maker. According to the president of GM Brazil-Mercosur, Jaime Ardila, the funding will come from the package of financial aid that the […]
Oil Players Stockpile Cheap Crude on Tankers
January 31st, 2009Via: Houston Chronicle: Oil demand has plummeted along with home prices and stock market indexes, but discerning where energy demand could go in 2009 isn’t easy. That’s why, as oil markets attempt to calibrate in the face of this recession, some traders, refiners, big oil companies and other interests have been buying cheap oil in […]
